Bitter Apple: GENESIS
by hakojo
Summary: "For God knows that when you eat of the fruit, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as a God yourself..."    SAC continuity.
1. Day 1

(A/N: Because I couldn't stick with just one self-indulgent backstory hypothesis, here's another one to keep you all entertained! Reviews welcome, and as always, thanks for reading.)

苦いりんご (Bitter Apple): GENESIS

**Day 1:**

The girl pushed her way forward, clawing fiercely at the sleepiness that held her back; she had been sleeping for too long, and she was afraid. She wanted to wake up.

"Brain activity is elevated."

She heard the words but didn't understand them; they were muffled, as if they were being spoken on the other side of a wall. Still, they encouraged her, and she continued to struggle toward the sound of them.

Suddenly, she realized that the drowsy feeling of shaking off sleep was gone. She was awake.

But this wasn't right; everything was black.

She couldn't feel her body, either.

"That's unusual; is she dreaming, perhaps?"

"No, sir – I think she's regaining consciousness."

The voices were still muted and incomprehensible, and the girl didn't know why. She tried again and again to open her eyes, move her body, but nothing happened.

Had she died? Was this what death was like?

Sensations flashed past her in a dizzy whirl – a bang, a flare of fire, too-hot-too-bright-too-loud, and then pain, and then darkness…

She opened her mouth and screamed.

A horrible sound grated against her ears: a rough, clipped, fuzzy moan overlaid with the whine of audio feedback. The noise terrified her further; she wanted it to stop, but it wouldn't, and the only thing she could think to do was keep screaming and screaming until someone made it go away….

There was movement around her now, muffled like the voices had been. Clattering and banging and rapid footsteps.

"For goodness' sake, put her out again!"

The girl felt sleep begin to crawl into the edges of her consciousness, and she fought desperately against it, but it pushed harder and harder until she could no longer resist.

She noticed, as she sank into unconsciousness again, that at least the noise had stopped.

* * *

When she next came to, it was suddenly and reluctantly –it felt as though someone had flicked a switch somewhere to wake her. She could feel now, at least, although the sensations she was experiencing were strangely numbed. She was lying on her back in what felt like a bed, though even though the numbness she could tell that it wasn't her own bed back at home – it felt wrong, and the light against her eyelids was too strong and too cold.

Light.

She could see.

Eagerly, she opened her eyes. The bright fluorescent lights overhead seared across them, and she blinked. Her eyes adjusted, and she blinked again.

And again.

Something was wrong.

She saw the white shapes of the room around her – a hospital room, from the look of it. Next to her bed was a bank of monitors and machines displaying various readouts, and around her were clustered a group of men in white coats, one or two carrying clipboards.

Everything was minutely jagged around the edges, and the colors were flat and dull. An image viewed on a screen.

She kept blinking.

One of the men, the one nearest her, stepped forward.

"Can you hear me?"

The voice sounded odd too, as if she was hearing it through a speaker.

Dimly, she nodded.

"That's good – you had us worried for quite a while there."

He smiled. The girl blinked again.

"Where am I?"

The voice that blurted out of her wasn't anything like the voice she remembered as her own. She was afraid now. One of the machines next to her began to beep in warning.

"Elevated nervous response," said one of the men, not the one who had spoken before. "I'll stabilize her."

He started forward. The girl gave a nervous whimper as he drew closer.

She expected to feel her heart beating loudly in her chest, but it was curiously absent.

Suddenly, a hand came down to rest on top of hers. She turned her head toward it as best she could – something heavy was pulling at the back of her neck.

A woman she hadn't noticed before was looking down at her, smiling kindly.

"It's all right, sweetheart. Nobody's going to hurt you."

She ran her hand over the girl's, and then looked up at the group of men assembled there.

"Dr. Murata, this has got to be frightening enough for her already – perhaps it would be best to leave her alone for the time being? I can answer her questions for now."

Dr. Murata, the man who had first spoken, cleared his throat.

"As the leader of the project, I believe I should be present at all stages of its development, Dr. Hosono."

"With all due respect, sir," said Dr. Hosono, her voice tightening, "she's a little girl who's just experienced a serious amount of trauma, and I'm fairly sure that waking up to find half the facility crowded around her isn't doing her any favors."

The girl let the words roll over her without fully understanding them. She wanted to get up and run away from this place, whatever it was, whatever had happened to her, but her body felt too heavy for her to even consider moving it.

"Very well," said Dr. Murata, after a long pause. "But I expect you to take notes on anything she reports about her condition."

"Of course, sir," said Dr. Hosono, bowing her head politely.

The men in the coats gradually filtered out of the room, until the girl was left alone with Dr. Hosono still holding her hand. The woman sighed and sat down on a small bench next to the bed.

"That's a little better, isn't it?" she said.

Not knowing how else to respond, the girl nodded. The doctor smiled; a tired, weary smile. She was silent for a few minutes, and then she got to her feet.

"There's something I'd like to show you, all right?"

The girl nodded again. Dr. Hosono walked over to a small alcove in the rear wall of the room, and then returned with a hand mirror.

"Sweetheart, I want you to look here. I promise you that it's just a mirror, and the person you're seeing is you."

Dr. Hosono held the mirror out so it was in front of the girl's face.

The girl leaned forward as well as she could, then drew back again.

Not even the strange quality of her vision could explain this.

She was looking at what appeared to be a doll's face. Its face was blankly attractive, like a mannequin's, and its skin had an unrealistic, plastic sheen to it. Its vividly colored hair was cut in a simple chin-length bob, and its eyes….

Red eyes. Round and wide, gazing back at her, the color of blood.

She blinked again in another attempt to clear her vision; she couldn't be seeing it correctly.

The doll blinked along with her.

She tried it once again, more slowly.

The doll followed the movement exactly.

It was her face. Her skin, her hair.

Her eyes.

She turned her head slowly to face Dr. Hosono once more, her mouth hanging open.

"Why…?" she whispered, in the voice that was not her own.

"There was a terrible accident," murmured the doctor, taking the girl's hand again. "Your body was hurt very, very badly. It couldn't take care of you anymore, so we had to make a new body for you to live inside."

"New body," repeated the girl slowly. The doctor nodded.

"It will work exactly the same as your old body, as soon as you get used to it. I promise."

The girl continued to stare at the face in the mirror. An accident. A new body. The eyes…

She didn't want to see anymore. She turned her head away.

She felt the doctor's hand on hers again, soft and gentle, its thumb sweeping slowly, methodically across her knuckles.

If she had a new body and a new face now, how would her parents ever recognize her when they came to take her home? Hopefully someone would explain the situation to them; she wanted very much to see them again, as soon as possible.

Would she even recognize her parents? She couldn't seem to recall their faces…

A sudden realization jolted her. She looked up at Dr. Hosono once more.

"Who am I?"

The woman froze briefly, and then sank backward, her brow furrowed with disappointment.

"We were hoping you'd be able to tell us…but…you don't remember anything, do you?"

Slowly, shakily, the girl shook her head. She looked down at her hand; it was trembling, jerking awkwardly, uncontrollably against the sheets where it lay. Vaguely, she felt the doctor's hand on her shoulders, moving slowly in small, gentle circles, over and over. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't.

Her body wouldn't let her.

* * *

She said nothing for the rest of the day. Dr. Hosono stayed by her side for as long as she could, although from time to time she'd be called away for half an hour or so. Now and then the other doctor, Murata, would come into the room and make some note on a reading from one of the monitors. He'd attempted to speak with his patient a few times, but when it became apparent that she wasn't going to respond, he stopped trying and left her alone.

There were other visitors as well; other doctors, who would enter the room and make their own observations from the monitors, saying nothing, and the occasional nurse, who would poke her head through the doorway as if just to peek at the young girl inside. Dr. Hosono was very prompt about shooing them away, when she was there; when she wasn't, they usually left anyway after a few moments of the girl's blank silence.

Gradually, she became aware of the activity around her winding down; there were fewer people looking in on her, and the lights in the hallway she could just barely see through the blinds covering the windows of her room had been dimmed. When Dr. Murata came in for his final visit, he was wearing a heavy coat and had a bag hanging from one shoulder.

"I'd like to speak with you in greater depth tomorrow, miss," he said. "That is, of course, if you're feeling up to it."

The girl responded as she had the entire day, with a blank stare.

"Well, goodnight. And goodnight to you, Dr. Hosono."

"Goodnight, sir."

Dr. Murata left the room. When he was gone, the girl turned to the other doctor, her eyes wide.

"…is it late?" she said. Even though she hadn't used it in hours, her voice was crisp and clear.

"Not overly so," said Dr. Hosono, checking her watch. "It's about half-past seven."

"Oh," said the girl.

There was a long moment of silence.

"Are you going to leave too?"

"I can stay a while longer, if you'd like," said the doctor, smiling.

Shyly, the girl nodded.

"All right, then. Just let me go find myself a more comfortable chair – I'll be right back."

* * *

The hours wore on. The overhead lights in the hall clicked off altogether, and the building fell silent.

Dr. Hosono had fallen asleep; her head was resting against her shoulder, and the magazine she'd been reading lay on top of the blanket she'd folder over her lap.

The girl was still wide awake; she didn't feel even the slightest bit tired. Even when she tried to lay back and close her eyes (she had to turn her head to one side, due to the cords attached to the back of her neck), she eventually grew bored and opened them again. She sat still, watching the night pass by.

Was this normal? Was it going to be this way for the rest of her life? Would she spend forever sitting here, unable to move, with no name and no family?

She wondered why she had been saved in the first place, if that was all she had to look forward to.

Her hands began to twitch again.


	2. Week 1

**Week 1:**

"Well, Yoshino, would you like to try walking today?" said Dr. Murata, clapping his hands together.

The girl nodded slowly.

They had all taken to calling her Yoshino, as she had no other name. Dr. Hosono had come up with it, and her young patient, eager to have some form of identity, hadn't objected. It was written "of beauty", she had been told, and what a fitting name for such a lovely young girl!

She knew they were just trying to help her grow accustomed to her new self, but she suspected that it was going to take much more than that for her to ever truly feel comfortable in the body she had been given.

Inch by inch, Yoshino rotated her upper body until she was facing the nurse who stood by her bed, waiting to help her. She held her arms out to the woman, who took hold of them.

"I want you to try to pull yourself up this time, all right?" said the nurse, smiling gently.

Yoshino nodded. This time she'd do it herself for sure; carefully, she began the delicate process of maneuvering her legs over the side of the bed. She'd been allowed to stand up only the day before, so she had some idea already of how to accomplish this, but it was still several minutes before she felt (in that odd, detached way of feeling) the soles of her feet touch the cold tile floor.

"Now, don't be discouraged if you can't do it on your first try," said Dr. Murata. He was surveying her intently over his glasses, pen already poised to begin taking notes.

He was always writing. For some reason, it made her nervous.

"Ready?" said the nurse.

Yoshino nodded again, focusing her attention on the muscles that made up the core of her body, willing them to pull her upright. She wondered if she'd ever be able to manipulate this body without thinking about it; it seemed like the tiniest motion required her full concentration to accomplish. It had taken her most of the last week just to figure out how her arms worked, and she wasn't anywhere close to being able to move her hands; they hung inert at the ends of her wrists, completely unresponsive.

Dr. Murata had told her again and again that it would take time; her brain was still getting used to operating a set of parts entirely different from what it had dealt with before, and she had already progressed beyond anything they'd expected of her.

It was so frustrating that she wanted to scream.

_Almost there_, she thought. She felt her teeth clench as she struggled to get to her feet.

"Well done!" said the nurse, patting her on the shoulder.

Yoshino looked around, somewhat dazed; she still felt dizzy from her exertion, but she knew it would pass in a few moments. The important part was that she was finally standing.

"Carefully, now," said Dr. Murata, scribbling away on his clipboard. "Houko, help her out, will you?"

The nurse nodded and placed her hands gently underneath Yoshino's arms, on either side of her chest.

"Whenever you're ready," she said kindly.

Yoshino nodded shortly, and then tried to take her first step forward.

And tried.

And tried.

After about a quarter of an hour, she still hadn't moved, and her hands were trembling furiously; by this point, the people who worked with her on a regular basis had quickly learned to recognize this as a warning sign.

"Now, calm down…" the nurse began; a second later, Yoshino was hanging limply in her arms, shaking worse than ever. Her right knee had jerked forward suddenly, sending her tumbling to the floor, and the shock of it had left her unable to pull herself up again.

"That's enough for today, I think," said Dr. Murata, setting aside his clipboard. "Get her settled down so she doesn't damage anything."

"Yes, sir."

Yoshino allowed herself to be moved back to her bed; it wasn't as if she could do anything else. She sensed a plug clicking smoothly into the back of her neck, and a feeling of dread chilled her, to be swiftly replaced by a feeling of nothing at all.

The shaking fits would eventually stop on their own, without the aid of the machines; whatever had been troubling her enough to cause the fit in the first place usually went with them as well. However, when she tried to tell the nurses this, they always told her that until she could control her body, there was a chance that her spasms could break some of the moving parts inside of her and they needed to be kept in check.

She lay perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling, unable to move even her head. She was acutely aware of the hours as they passed – she seemed to have some strange, internal sense of the time, as if she was a machine herself.

Eventually she heard voices coming down the hall.

"-understand that you have things to do other than stand here, but if you could at least have someone check on her periodically, I'd very much appreciate it."

"Yes, ma'am."

There was a soft knock, and then the sound of the door sliding open. Two sets of footsteps clicked across the floor, one to Yoshino's left and the other to her right. She felt a hand touch her forearm, and at the same time the fog inside her brain lifted. Still somewhat dazed, she turned her head to the side.

"Good afternoon," said Dr. Hosono, squeezing the girl's wrist affectionately. She looked up briefly. "Thank you, Houko."

Yoshino lifted her head slightly; the nurse from earlier was there as well, although she quickly bowed her head and left the room.

"So," said Dr. Hosono, "I heard you got up again today."

Yoshino nodded.

"Didn't go so well?"

She nodded again.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She shook her head.

"That's fine," said Dr. Hosono. "How have you been otherwise?"

Yoshino remained silent; what was there to say? When she wasn't failing at operating her body, she was lying still and counting the seconds pass.

Her arms started to shake again, all the way up to her shoulders. Now that the machines weren't stopping it any longer, her previous episode seemed determined to pick up where it had left off.

She noticed that Dr. Hosono had placed a hand on her shoulder, as if to comfort her, and she shook her head.

"It feels good," she said.

Her voice didn't sound as sincere as she would have liked - it was still difficult for her to control its volume and intonation to express subtle emotions, especially since she had so few opportunities to practice.

"Really?" said Dr. Hosono.

Yoshino nodded

"It feels like…crying."

"Oh? How so?"

It took a moment for Yoshino to come up with the right words; her trembling hands had stilled, and she suddenly felt exhausted.

"It's like everything bad inside me wells up all at once...and then it just goes away…"

It was always like this when she tried to do something new with her body – the physical and mental strain was more than enough to completely wear her out. Her head sank to one side on the pillow and her vision began to flicker and fade.

"I think I understand," said Dr. Hosono thoughtfully. She smiled and gave Yoshino's hand a final squeeze before getting to her feet.

"Sleep well; I'll see you later, all right?"

"Okay…"

* * *

When she woke again, her room was dark and the lights in the hallway had been dimmed. It was seven minutes to midnight. Yoshino turned resignedly onto one side; there was no getting back to sleep now. She'd just have to lie there and wait for morning to come.

Suddenly, she realized that she'd been able to move. The machines that usually kept her immobilized at night were inactive. The nurse on duty must have seen her sleeping and assumed they'd been turned on already.

A sudden thrill shot through Yoshino's brain. For the first time in her brief span of memory, she felt alive. She wanted to get up, move, run, jump…

_But I can't._

_Why not?_

The thought came to her as if spoken by another person entirely. Why couldn't she get up if she felt like it? There were no machines restraining her, no doctors or nurses watching, marking down every little twitch on their clipboards. No excuses.

Yoshino rolled onto her back and then, as she had done before just that afternoon, pulled herself upright.

_Don't think about it, just do it._

She moved over to the edge of her bed and then swung her legs over the side; first one, then the other. Once the pads of her feet were securely touching the floor, she pressed the palms of her hands into the mattress and pushed herself up.

The thrill soared through her again, tingling all the way out to her extremities as she studied the dim reflection of herself in the hall window. Standing alone, just like anyone else, adjusting and balancing the distribution of her weight without having to consider it for even a moment.

Her eyes were fixed on the glass. She wanted to touch it.

_Don't think about it._

So quickly that she was barely able to register how she'd done it, she took her first step forward.

And then her second.

Her third came more slowly; despite her own mind's protests, she had started condensing what she was doing into a recognizable set of motions. Shift her weight to one side, lift the opposite foot, swing forward, repeat.

The window was drawing closer and closer. She extended one arm, reaching toward it, wanting to feel the glass beneath her fingertips.

So close.

All at once, the tiled floor came rushing up to meet her.

_Oh…_

Pain smashed into her knees, then her hands, and finally her chest as she failed to catch herself. Yoshino tried to pick herself up again, to get back on her feet, but her arms were already trembling too furiously to do much of anything.

_No. Don't think about it._

She pressed her hands flat against the floor and started to push. Slowly, agonizingly, she heaved her body up off of the ground and into a sitting position.

_Listen to me._

She was up on her knees now, rocking forward onto the pads of her feet. She was going to stand again and her body would just have to play along.

_Listen to me!_

And then, suddenly, she was up.

Without hesitating, she took the final few steps to the window and placed the tips of her fingers against the glass, touching hands with her own reflection.

The red eyes weren't so frightening when they were smiling.

The image of her own face rippled and turned dull as a sudden wave of exhaustion rolled over her. Yoshino turned herself, groping blindly for her bed, but it was too far away. She staggered backwards and then crumpled to the floor. Even as she lost consciousness, the smile lingered on her face.

_I did it…_


	3. Month 1

**Month 1:**

The room was small and quiet, with blue walls and white carpet on the floor. It was plainly furnished, containing only a dresser, a small set of shelves, and a bed tucked into the corner furthest from the door. The bed's occupant was still asleep, a little girl with her arms tight around the doll that lay next to her. As the early morning sun streamed through the room's single window, it illuminated the violet hair of both the girl and the doll, intermingled on the pillow.

Yoshino had moved from the observation wing of the hospital into her new room only a week previously. Dr. Murata had been reluctant to let her go, as she still displayed the odd twitch or jerk here and there, but he had been overruled; when Yoshino had asked Dr. Hosono how that had happened, the woman had merely smiled and told her not to worry about it, that it was time for her to stop being a test case and start learning to live again.

"So perceptive for such a little girl…I wonder sometimes if we didn't put a grown-up in that body accidentally."

Yoshino had laughed at that, although, she later thought to herself, it hadn't been hard to pick out the politics at work in her situation. Dr. Murata had directed the team that had built her body, and Dr. Hosono was merely studying her mental development and well-being, and of course their interests would conflict from time to time; it was then that they turned to the third, overarching authority that she had yet to see.

She'd tried to ask her lights about it, but they had nothing useful to tell her.

Nobody knew about the lights. They were her secret.

Yoshino had met them on her first night in the new room, her first night out of the oppressive atmosphere of the observation wing. She'd been lying still with her eyes closed, trying in vain to fall asleep when she had noticed the first one; a bright point inside of her head. More had gradually revealed themselves to her, coming out one by one like stars rising on a clear night, infinitely far away and yet at the same time appearing to be so close that she could reach out and touch them. They were beautiful, and for the rest of the night she had lain half in and half out of consciousness, watching them twinkle invitingly in their strange constellations.

She had assumed that, like stars, they would fade out when morning came and then return to her again the next night, but to her surprise, the lights stayed with her all through the day. While she couldn't see them as clearly as she had with her eyes closed, she could still feel them, and even as she went about the new activities that made up her day (completing her exercises, speaking with her new caretakers, and attempting to interact with the other children with whom she now lived) she remained at all times dimly aware of the bright points floating in the space inside her head. When she'd finally had some time to go back to her own room and be by herself, she had curled up on her bed with her doll and closed her eyes again. As soon as the first light revealed itself to her, she had reached out within her mind and placed her hand on it.

**Authentication. Connection. Welcome.**

Suddenly, instead of looking up at a starry sky, Yoshino had felt herself drifting along in a vast sea, moving at the speed of light.

The light…

Thousands of little lights, all racing toward her at once, eager to touch and share; nuzzling against her until she bubbled with laughter, sinking down into her skin, creating tiny bursts of clarity as they collided with each other inside her brain. Yoshino had let the currents carry her along, absorbing countless pinpricks of light, until she'd begun to feel a strange pressure inside her head.

_That's enough…_

The pinpricks had surged ever towards her like a luminous cloud, begging her to stay even as she tried to pull back. Suddenly, a command had sprung into her mind.

_Disengage!_

And she'd found herself back in her room, lying on her bed, with her doll's round, cheerful eyes gazing vacantly into her own.

Besides the lingering feeling of giddiness that the lights had left in her, Yoshino had also discovered a rather large chunk of information in her mind, information that she knew no one had ever told her; it was so vast that someone would have had to sit and relate it to her for hours and hours. The information itself was fairly uninteresting – ordering records from the hospital for the last month – but the way it had all been dumped neatly into Yoshino's head intrigued and fascinated her. She'd wondered what else the lights had to share, and every night since, she'd taken to exploring with them before she went to sleep, then poring over the information she'd received during the day.

The clock on the nightstand clicked over to eight in the morning.

Yoshino's eyes snapped open at once.

She sat up, stretched, and then turned to her doll, who was still lying half under the covers. Drawing her lips into a slight pout, she very carefully set the doll upright against the headboard.

"Time to get up, Hana."

Once she was satisfied that her companion was ready to begin the day with her, Yoshino slowly but steadily made her way to her dresser and crouched down to open the bottommost drawer. After a moment of consideration, she picked out a coral-colored dress with short sleeves, which she set aside in order to remove the top and pants she'd been sleeping in. As soon as she was free of her nightclothes, Yoshino bent forward and inserted her straightened arms into the sleeves of the dress, then sat up and let it fall down over her head. She stood, looking down at her body to examine her handiwork, and then smiled briefly in satisfaction. Next came a pair of slip-on shoes, and then finally, after smoothing her hair awkwardly into place with her wrists, she gathered Hana up into her arms and stepped out into the hallway.

As usual, Yoshino was the first to reach the common room; the nurse who supervised the group greeted her with a smile and a wave.

_Ai Ohta, age 36. Holds level 4 personnel clearance._

"Good morning, Yoshino! And Hana," she added, nodding to the doll still tight in Yoshino's arms. "Did you sleep well?"

Yoshino nodded enthusiastically, smiling as she did so.

She'd discovered quickly that the more she smiled, the more the doctors left her alone.

Pleasantries exchanged, Yoshino headed straight for her favorite chair and climbed into it, settling Hana snugly in her lap. The nurse smiled indulgently and then went about her work, leaving the girl to watch as the rest of her housemates trickled in in ones and twos.

_Keiko Mishima, age 7. Undergoing micromachine treatment for partial paralysis._

_Noriko Uehara, age 9. Lost lower half of right leg in an automobile collision; adjusting to prosthetic replacement._

_Kenji Wakabayashi, age 6. Both legs replaced with prosthetics below the knee due to birth defects._

_Yuki Sakamoto, age 8. Adjusting to prosthetic left arm; original damaged beyond repair in domestic violence case._

_Shouji Takahashi, age 7. Fitted with prosthetic right hand following injury sustained during accidental involvement with scene of gang violence._

The more time she spent with her lights, the more they were willing to show her. They trusted her now, taking her behind locked doors, into places she wasn't sure she was supposed to go, but they were so eager to share that she felt awful refusing them. Not to mention that the information she gathered from them was too interesting to resist.

A part of her even wondered if knowing more about the people by whom she was surrounded would help her understand and better coexist with them.

Maybe the problem was with her, and how little she gave them to work with.

Once she'd gone through the data on all of her peers, Yoshino had asked the lights for her own file out of curiosity. She wanted to know what all of the doctors and nurses saw when they looked at her.

The empty spaces where all of the other children had had reams of information had hit her almost like a physical blow. Her name was Yoshino and her body was entirely prosthetic – everything else was blank.

She wasn't anyone.

And she certainly hadn't been able to say anything to anyone about the matter. She'd just buried it in the back of her mind; maybe the lights had more information that was being kept somewhere separate.

There had to be more. She just needed to find it.

It was almost nine, and the rest of the children had since arrived in the common room, some of them (mostly those in the early stages of their treatment) trailing personal aides behind them. Yoshino had had one herself for the first couple of days after the move, but she'd quickly proved that she could handle herself and was in no danger of any sort of emotional outburst.

She did somewhat miss the company, but she had Hana for that, after all.

"Come on, everyone, time for breakfast!" called Miss Ohta, sliding aside a partition in one wall. Yoshino got down from her chair and filed into the room with everyone else to take her place at the table.

Even though Yoshino had almost no memory of the body she'd been born with, certain things caused her to long for it to a point that was almost unbearable, and the very worst was eating. Her new body wasn't capable of processing ordinary food (although Dr. Murata had told her that one day they hoped to create a kind of body that was), and when she'd first sat down to eat with her new housemates, a pang of envy had seared through her. Although it kept her body fueled, the synthetic food she ate had almost no discernable taste or texture; she would have given anything for even a simple bowl of rice and a body with which to enjoy it.

Again, she had locked those feelings away deep within her mind, where they wouldn't trouble her.

The doctors thought that her shaking fits had stopped because she had gained some measure of control over her body, but it was because she had learned how to control her mind, to forget the things that upset her.

Between her adventures with the lights during the night and her harsh management of her own thoughts during the day, Yoshino began to suspect that her body wasn't the only thing that had been altered.

She needed more information.

After breakfast it was time for the group's first round of exercises, after which they split off into smaller groups to work in more specialized areas. As Yoshino was already capable of walking unaided, she spent the time practicing fine motor coordination, manipulating her hands and fingers and adjusting to the way her body sent the delicate sensory signals to her brain.

It was even more frustrating than learning to walk had been; that, although far from easy, was, when she looked back on it, at least a relatively simple sequence of actions to memorize. The ways in which she could move her hands, even to complete the same action, varied into infinity, until trying to micromanage each of the systems and subsystems involved in the motion made her dizzy. It didn't help that, unlike her peers, she had no frame of reference; they all had natural arms and hands still attached to their bodies, or at the very least some memories of what it had been like to possess them. She had to start from the very beginning.

That was why she liked it best when she was able to go off by herself and sink back into her own mind, into the strange, vast world she shared with her lights.

The session ended; after struggling for a good ten minutes to pick them up in the first place, Yoshino had managed to snap four consecutive sets of the chopsticks she had been trying to learn to use into splinters. Everyone had stared at her, but that was only a secondary concern. Resignedly, she pushed the day's feelings of failure into the empty spaces of her brain and let them fade away.

* * *

After lunch, the children moved in a noisy group out to the little courtyard that stood between the wing of the facility in which they lived and the main hospital building. The groups of friends that had emerged separated into their gangs of threes and fours, racing each other around the grassy space or showing off how well they could use their prosthetics.

Yoshino sat with her back to the wall and Hana on her lap, watching.

From the very first day, Miss Ohta and the other nurses had encouraged her to talk to her peers and make friends, and she'd tried, if only just to placate them, but she'd always wound up off on her own again. The other children didn't seem especially eager to have anything to do with her anyway, and they were content to leave her alone.

"Nobody's giving you any _trouble_, though, are they?" Miss Ohta had said, her hand on Yoshino's shoulder.

"No," the girl had replied. "Everything's fine."

She had Hana and the lights to keep her company. That was all she needed.

She watched as the other children moved past her in their games, only half her mind focused on them; the other half was moving along the light paths she hadn't travelled yet in search of new information.

_Makoto Takayama, age 7. Requires prosthetic left leg after bicycle accident._

_Meiko Ohkawa, age 6. Being treated for spinal injuries._

_Natsuko Amaha, age 11. Right shoulder replaced with prosthesis after sports injury._

Yoshino heard a set of footsteps approaching her from behind, precise and measured. She turned around.

_Ritsuko Hosono, age 42. Holds level 2 personnel clearance._

"Dr. Hosono!" said Yoshino, standing up as quickly as she could manage.

"Hello, Yoshino. I figured it was about time I came to see you! Getting along all right?"

Yoshino nodded.

"That's good. How's Hana?"

Yoshino smiled and hugged the doll closer to her chest.

"I've told Houko about how you carry her everywhere – she's happy you like her so much."

"I think I'd like to see Houko again sometime too." said Yoshino. The young nurse had been the only one who had seemed to accept her patient's relative silence instead of trying to get her to talk, and a sort of unspoken friendship had grown between them because of it. "Could you tell her that?"

"Of course," said Dr. Hosono. "I'm sure she'd love to come visit when she gets the chance." The woman clapped her hands together. "Well, how about we go sit somewhere and catch up? I want to hear about everything you've been doing since the last time I saw you."

"Okay!" said Yoshino, and followed Dr. Hosono back inside. They sat down in the common room, Yoshino in her favorite chair and Dr. Hosono on the side of the sofa closest to it, and at the doctor's prompting, the girl began to relate the last week of her life, slowly and carefully. She talked about how much she liked the room she had to herself, and how nice all of the nurses were, and how even though she was still having trouble with her exercises, it was simply because they were more difficult now, and even so she was certain that she'd be able to master them with some practice.

She had very few unpleasant experiences to share, as she'd deleted most of them, but nobody had to know that.

Dr. Hosono, for her part, was pleased with Yoshino's general optimism, although like Miss Ohta, she seemed to be concerned with her lack of social interaction.

"I understand that you're, well…different, and that can cause problems….If anybody's been mistreating you because of it, you can tell me. You know that, right?"

Yoshino nodded.

"Everyone's been really nice to me."

She didn't understand why she needed to get along with her peers; she was happy enough on her own. If she wanted to sit by herself, lost in her lights, that was her business.

And if the other children wanted to leave her to it, that was theirs.

"All right, all right…" said Dr. Hosono. "I just…None of us want you to feel like you're _missing_ anything..."

"I'm not," said Yoshino, putting on a smile for good measure.

"Okay, then….Anything else you want to talk about?"

Yoshino shook her head.

"All right; I'm glad you're doing so well, and I'll come visit you again soon, okay? I'll ask Houko to visit too."

"Thank you!" said Yoshino

"It's nothing," said Dr. Hosono, reaching out to pat the girl on the shoulder. "See you around."

* * *

Later that evening, after supper, Yoshino was finally able to get away from the main group and go back to her room; because of the extent to which she was prostheticized, she tired more quickly than her peers, and as a result she needed more rest than they did.

At least, she was supposed to tire more quickly, and as the nurses were aware of this, if she complained of fatigue at all, they excused her with no questions asked.

Usually when she said this, it was because she just wanted to be alone.

She sat on the side of her bed, her hands clamped awkwardly around Hana's waist to hold her steady.

She looked into the doll's eyes; they were brilliant red, just like her own.

Yoshino had been afraid of them at first, but eventually she'd just stopped thinking about them. When Houko had first given Hana to her, she hadn't even really registered that the doll was her exact miniature, down to the visible joints in her wrists and knees; it was just the way she was.

It was only when she'd been moved in with the rest of the children that she'd remembered how odd she must have looked to them.

She hadn't asked for any of it; it wasn't even as if her body was unattractive. More importantly, she could speak and think just the same as anyone else. She could walk and even run if she concentrated, and though she was still working out the issues with her hands, they weren't utterly debilitating.

She wondered what the body she'd been born with looked like, before it had died. She wondered what had happened to it.

She wondered if the other children would like it better.

Emotion surged inside her, spiking dangerously; desperately, she tried to shove it back to the far spaces where it would be deleted, but it was no use; it had come upon her too quickly for her to react in time.

"…It's not fair," she whispered to herself.

Her hands, shaking for the first time in weeks, gave an enormous jerk.

There was a loud _crack_.

"Hana!"

The doll's plastic body had shattered in her grip.

Yoshino watched in faint horror as the head, still smiling, tumbled backward onto the carpet.

"Hana…" she said again, achingly.

She looked at the doll's head, lying there with its vibrant hair fanned out around it in a cloud, and then at her own hands.

It wasn't fair.

* * *

(A/N: Gabriela is back in action, which means this story will resume updating as regularly as I can make myself write it ^_^ I'm hoping to pick up the pace a little from here, as we're moving out of the 'stuff I need to have happen' bits and into the 'stuff I really want to write about' bits.

I've heard of kids who are amputees getting dolls that have limbs missing to make them feel less uncomfortable about missing limbs themselves, so from there it was just a natural extension for Yoshino to get a doll that looked like her (plus I want to say that the one that gets smashed up in the "Inner Universe" OP animation has purple hair and red eyes...you'd think I'd remember for sure after having seen it a few hundred times.) Of course, this begs the question, was the person who designed her initial body high when they did so, and if so, why the hell did she keep that color scheme for so long? Maybe it's just because everything for kids has to have bright colors in Japan...I dunno.

Don't blame her for at least keeping the hair, though; _I've_ got purple hair, and while I love it to death, I would love it even more if I didn't have to recolor it every month :D)


	4. Year 1

**Year 1**

Yoshino stepped through the open double doors, curiously scanning her new surroundings. The room she found herself in was larger than any she'd ever seen before, with a high ceiling and places marked on the vast tiled floor for beds and equipment; it was obviously meant to hold much more than the single solitary bed at the far end of the room, toward which Dr. Murata led her briskly.

As they drew closer, she noticed that the floor was dotted with white, here and there at first, but thickening into a veritable cloud around the bed. She knelt down to examine the first spot she saw; as she moved closer, her eyes were able to pick out the shape and feed it back to her cyberbrain as a coherent image.

A paper crane.

Delicately, she lifted it off the ground and turned it back and forth.

As she looked around, she realized that the rest of the spots on the floor were cranes, gathering into a great heap at the far end of the room. She stood up again; where had they all come from?

Her eyes moved to the bed, to the boy who lay there, his left hand working furiously at something she couldn't see. When he withdrew it, it held a finished crane, which he promptly dropped on the floor before reaching for a new sheet of paper. He didn't seem to have noticed that he had visitors; his attention was focused entirely on his cranes, his face a rigid mask of determination.

"Good morning, Hideo," said Dr. Murata. "Feeling all right today?"

The boy glanced upward briefly, and then returned his gaze to the piece of paper he was working with. Yoshino thought this was very rude of him, but Dr. Murata seemed unfazed.

"I've brought someone to visit you," he continued cheerfully. "This is Yoshino; you remember me telling you about her, don't you?"

The boy, Hideo, offered a short nod, then dropped another crane on the ground and reached for more paper. His left hand manipulated it with the precision of a factory machine.

Usually Yoshino would have said something herself by this point, but she was beginning to feel that her presence here was unwanted, and so she remained silent.

"He's been mostly unresponsive for the last two years," Dr. Murata had told her only the day before. "I'm not sure this will work, but it's worth a try – he might be more open to speaking with someone closer to his own age."

Hideo had been almost completely paralyzed after suffering a major spinal injury in a plane crash. It was Yoshino's task to talk him into accepting a replacement prosthetic body like her own, an idea to which he had not been at all receptive.

Yoshino wasn't particularly enthusiastic about her new job either; while she understood that she would have died without her prosthetics, her current condition wasn't exactly something she wanted to try to push onto someone else. Still, it was an excuse to get away from her normal, boring routine, and so she'd leapt upon it the instant Dr. Murata had asked her.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, then," said the doctor. He patted Yoshino on the shoulder and then left the room.

The sound of rustling paper was nearly deafening.

Yoshino stepped forward slowly; Hideo seemed not to notice, absorbed as he was in folding his cranes.

A tall pyramid of cardboard boxes stood against the wall. Curiously, she peeked into the nearest one.

It was full of still more paper cranes. Was this really all he'd done for two years?

"Wow," said Yoshino quietly, stepping back from the box. She turned to Hideo.

"Are you making all of these so you'll get better someday? You've gotta have more than a thousand by now…"

He ignored her. Another crane fluttered to the ground.

This was going to be interesting. How was she supposed to talk him into a prosthetic body if he kept pretending she wasn't even there?

Yoshino sighed and resignedly began boxing up the cranes that still remained on the floor. It was something to do, and at any rate, being here was better than being bossed around by the usual nurses. When she left for the day, she had asked Dr. Murata, in a very quiet, concerned voice, if it would be problematic for her to skip her therapy sessions and come back tomorrow. It was no trouble at all, he'd said at once, and he promised to make sure the rest of the staff knew what was going on, so no one would worry.

When she smiled as she did then, one could almost suspect her of just having manipulated something to her advantage.

* * *

The days began to fall into a distinct pattern; after breakfast, Yoshino would make her way across the building to the ward where Hideo lived (she had downloaded the hospital's floor plan to her cyberbrain months ago, and had no difficulty finding her way.) She'd tell him good morning, he wouldn't respond, and then she'd clean up all of the paper cranes he had produced the previous day and stack them against the wall with the rest. Once the floor was mostly bare, she would curl up against the pile of boxes with a book, which she didn't actually read; she had learned to work her cyberbrain with her eyes open, and the book was just to cover her stillness while she was lost within the mazy patterns of data.

One morning, several days later, as Yoshino was boxing up the latest flurry of paper cranes, she came across one that was different from the others; instead of plain white, it was a light lavender color. She supposed that it had been a part of an envelope at one point, as she could see writing still on the underside of one of the wings – it must have made its way into the piles of scrap paper that the nurses delivered to Hideo every day.

She held it up.

"Hey, Hideo-_kun_, I really like this one's color…can I keep it?"

"No."

It was the first word she'd heard him say.

"How come?"

"It's not yours," he said tersely, without looking up.

"All you do is fold these dumb things, you'd think you'd have enough by now," muttered Yoshino, tucking the lavender crane into the box with the rest.

The sound of folding paper stopped. She turned back to Hideo; he was glaring fiercely at her.

"They aren't mine either!"

"What? Then who are you making them for, you weirdo?"

"They're for…someone else! And you're the weirdo – you have purple hair!"

"Shut up about my hair, okay?" snarled Yoshino, getting to her feet at once. She made it to the bed in three quick strides, with Hideo still staring daggers at her.

"What on earth is going on here?"

Both children looked up at the same time; one of the front office nurses was standing only a few meters away with her hands on her hips. She must have heard the commotion.

"I finally got him to talk," said Yoshino coolly, pushing past the woman. "Excuse me."

She spent the rest of the day in her room, alternately fuming and perusing the few news sites she could access through the hospital's limited Net, repeatedly swearing to herself that she'd have nothing to do with that boy for as long as she lived. However, when the next morning came and Miss Ohta asked if she'd be joining the group that day, she politely declined and went off to Hideo's room as she usually did. He'd probably just go back to ignoring her anyway, and she could sit and explore in peace.

To her surprise, he seemed genuinely pleased to see her again when she showed up in his doorway, and even mumbled a little "good morning" in response to her usual brusque greeting.

Yoshino had just tucked the latest box of paper cranes against the wall and settled in to pretend to read her book when she heard her name.

"Yoshino-_chan_…"

She looked up. Hideo was gazing down at her, looking as though he might burst into tears.

"What?"

"I…I'm sorry I said your hair was weird."

"Oh," she said, and turned away again. "It's okay."

There was a long pause.

"I thought you weren't going to come back after yesterday."

"Me too," said Yoshino briefly.

"Why did you?"

"Because Dr. Murata wants me to tell you to get a prosthetic body."_ And because this is better than being with those other idiots I have to spend time with_, she thought, although she didn't say it.

"Oh…"

Yoshino was silent for several moments. At last, she looked up again.

"Hideo-_kun_?"

The boy blinked. "Yes?"

"How come you won't get prosthetics, anyway?"

He pointed at her.

"Your hands…can you fold cranes with them?"

Yoshino sighed.

"I guess I could. What is it with you and the stupid cranes anyway?"

"It's not stupid," he mumbled, his brow furrowing.

"Sorry," said Yoshino. "But, really…why do you keep making them?"

Hideo stared at her for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not to share something that was very close to him, and she waited patiently for him to speak. He took a deep breath.

"There used to be a girl there, in the bed next to mine, where you're sitting now…only after the accident, she fell asleep and she wouldn't wake up again. I wanted her to wake up...she was the only one who was still…who didn't….and then…"

He fell silent again, but his expression told Yoshino everything she needed to know; the girl had been very dear to him, somehow, and she'd died. Wordlessly, she got up and placed her hand on top of his.

"If I can't keep making cranes for her," said Hideo, "I'm fine with staying the way I am."

Yoshino thought for a moment, and then smiled.

"So if I can show you that I can fold paper cranes, you'll get a prosthetic body?"

"I guess…"

"All right," said Yoshino. "You're on!"

She reached for a piece of paper; it slipped out of her fingers almost immediately.

Perhaps this wasn't going to be as easy as she'd thought.

The afternoon wore on, and although Yoshino had finally managed to maneuver a sheet of paper close enough to herself on the tabletop to actually work with it, she had yet to produce a single crane, or anything, really, other than a crumpled mess. At first Hideo had politely directed her, but he had given up after about half an hour and was now watching mutely with a blank expression. Every so often Yoshino would look up and smile at him, trying to pretend that everything was all right, but her frustration was growing harder and harder to mask.

She had progressed enormously in the last year; all of the doctors and nurses said so. She could eat and put on clothes by herself, and she hadn't broken anything in months. And still her senses were nowhere near delicate enough to be able to fold a sheet of paper.

She pushed her chair back from the bed and got up.

"Tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow, for real."

Hideo merely nodded. He didn't believe her.

* * *

That night, as Yoshino lay in bed, she began searching through the old patient records of the ward where Hideo lived. She was curious about the girl for whom he'd done nothing other than fold cranes for the last two years - what had she been to him to merit such devotion? Could they have been siblings, or had some other close relationship?

She raced along the Net paths as she searched for the information.

Finally, she managed to turn up the appropriate file; there were three girls who had been admitted in connection with that particular plane crash, all of them burned beyond recognition and unable to be identified. Two had died only the day after incident – Yoshino pushed their files out of the way, focusing on the third. She scanned the file eagerly, soaking up the information it contained.

The girl was estimated to be six or seven years old at the time of the crash; she had also been the least outwardly damaged, although her internal injuries had been severe enough to send her into a coma. She had lived in this condition for another week and a half, until finally she was pronounced brain dead. No relatives had ever come to claim her remains.

So Hideo had spent two years folding paper cranes for a girl he'd never spoken to, whose face he'd never even had a chance to see.

That was definitely weird.

Yoshino was about to release the file and go to sleep when she noticed a small icon at the bottom, next to the date of death. It was an icon that usually indicated the transfer of a patient from one ward to another.

Why would anyone have transferred a dead body?

Curiously, she followed the path.

The data displayed in her mind shimmered and rearranged itself.

A very familiar face appeared in her cyberbrain, next to a single name.

_Yoshino._

It was the file she'd tried to find months ago, that had always seemed to elude her.

_Name unknown. Age unknown. Gender: Female_

Why hadn't she looked harder, been more curious about where she had come from, about her life before this body? All this time and she'd barely given it any thought.

_The patient's brain functions were supplanted with micromachines in an attempt to induce consciousness. The stress proved too great for the patient's injured body, which had be replaced. Memory loss was unavoidable due to the extent of the existing neural damage, although the patient has since made a full recovery and regularly exhibits normal and above-normal mental facilities._

The data went on into a lengthy description of her progress so far, but Yoshino scrolled past it without seeing it. She was thinking of all of the boxes that were piled up next to Hideo's bed. She was the girl. Every crane in every one of those boxes was for her.

He'd wished and wished for her to wake up, and when she hadn't, he'd continued to fold cranes for her, every day for two years, without even knowing what she looked like. He was willing to stay paralyzed for the rest of his life, all for her.

She pushed the file away. She didn't want to see anymore.

_Tomorrow_, she thought. _Tomorrow I'm going to make a perfect crane, and then I'll tell him everything._

* * *

"Good morning, Hideo-_kun_."

"Good morning, Yoshino-_chan_," he replied quietly.

She sat down next to the bed and coaxed a piece of paper across the tabletop, dragging at it with her fingertips.

She was definitely going to do it this time. Then she'd tell him, very quietly, that she was the girl he thought had died, and he'd never feel compelled to make another crane again.

Very delicately, she rolled the top corner of the paper down to meet the bottom corner, and then flattened the crease with the heel of her hand.

She'd be there for him during every step of his rehabilitation; she could help him learn to walk, to use his hands, to do everything she wished she'd had someone to show her. She would finally have someone to be different with.

Yoshino flattened the folded triangle into a square, then picked it up, easing her thumb under one of the flaps.

She would even show him the strange, vast world of light and information only accessible by cyberbrain; her dearest secret.

She opened the flap and began pressing it gently downward into a flat diamond.

It was the only way she could begin to reciprocate the thousands of wishes he'd already made for her happiness. She would convince him to get a prosthetic body, and then she would never leave his side.

So suddenly that it startled her, the paper snagged on her fingertips, tearing neatly across the top corner.

She looked up at Hideo; he had turned away.

Slowly, Yoshino pushed the ruined piece of paper away, then got to her feet.

"I'm going to practice folding paper cranes so that I can make them for _you_ someday, okay?"

Hideo turned toward her with wide eyes. She smiled at him, and then left.

* * *

"Not going to visit your friend today, Yoshino?" said Miss Ohta as the girl complacently filed outside for morning exercises with the rest of the group.

"No, ma'am," she said quietly.

Someday she'd be able to fold paper cranes, and then she could think about facing him again.

* * *

(A/N: Fun fact; this episode is actually how I learned to fold cranes. .

Also, I loved finally getting to write dialogue in this chapter XD Yoshino gets progressively more catty from this point forward, and the next chapter is pretty much all about her cattiness, so it should be a bit more fun to read than just her doing stuff and then navel-gazing about it. Stay tuned, and thank you as always for reading and reviewing 8D)


	5. Year 5

**Year 5:**

_Places, everyone; all barriers active. Report in sequence. Ranbu?_

_Barrier up; ready to go._

_Good; Chakkun?_

_In position._

_Excellent. Hatter?_

_With you all the way, Miss Black Magic!_

_For the last time, you dork, stop calling me that._

_Sorry._

_Right – we don't have much time here. I'm gonna go ahead and dive it now; you three keep watch._

_Understood._

The maze of lights wove into a vicious tangle, thick with barrier programs moving along their set paths at the speed of light, ready to tear into anyone who shouldn't be there. The entire construct resembled an enormous atom with electrons buzzing dangerously around its nucleus.

_Activating mask array. Projecting into main barrier._

_All clear so far– go for it._

There was a sudden surge of pressure, and then a release.

Inside the server, the figure of a woman materialized; she was tall and slender, and the suit that clung tightly to her voluptuous curves shimmered with deep purple and gold. Brilliant violet eyes gleamed behind her thick, bright red hair, surveying her surroundings.

She raised one hand, and an interface formed in it, melting together out of the light that flowed in circuits around her. The woman brought it up in front of her eyes and began to read.

_Okay, I've found the code we're looking for; it's definitely in here somewhere._

_Hurry – system sweep scheduled in two minutes, and I don't know what that'll do to your mask._

_I know. If time gets tight, back me up with your decoys._

_Got it._

Holding her arm straight out, the woman swept her hand in a wide arc, and hundreds of beads of light sprang from her fingertips, zigzagging into the heart of the server. She watched their progress carefully, tracking them along their invisible paths; most of them winked out of existence when they failed to find a target, and after only ten seconds, less than a quarter remained.

The beads that found their search objects stuck fast to them and began to glow, drawing bright threads between the woman and the files to which they'd adhered.

After thirty seconds, when the last of them had faded, she yanked those that remained back to her, drawing the files with them.

_System sweep in one minute. Decoys deployed._

_Almost done._

Due to their size, the files were taking longer than she would have liked to copy over; the upside to this, however, was that if one of them was indeed the archive she was looking for, the payoff would be even greater.

_System sweep in ten seconds!_

_Transfer completed! Disengage, all of you!_

The form of the woman faded out of the server. A wall of translucent white light swept through the space she had occupied only microseconds before.

Once she was safely out of harm's way, she examined her haul. A smile spread slowly across her face.

_Mission accomplished, gentlemen._

Three voices responded simultaneously in a jumble of enthusiasm.

_No way! Seriously?_

_That's Chroma for you!_

_Let's see!_

_I'm uploading the archive into shared memory; hang on a sec._

An alert went off when the file had finished its transfer from her cyberbrain, followed by another three as the other members of the team successfully pulled down their copies.

_Yup, that's Nakajima, all right._

_And that's his secretary!_

_Holy….dude really needs to do a better job scrubbing the security footage if he's going to do this kind of shit!_

_Seriously. And there's more of this? Does either of them ever actually get any work done?_

_Probably not._

_Heey, Chroma! This video is giving me some ideas – what do you say?_

There was a sudden burst of static, and then one of the channels fell silent.

_You okay, Hatter?_

_I think the black magic got him…_

_You wanna be next, Ranbu?_

The reply was a petrified silence.

_All right, guys – you know what to do. Let's see if we can't make Nakajima's week just a little more interesting._

_Way ahead of you; I've already copied it to 14 others._

_Uploading to a file sharing hub as we speak._

"Tanaka, please read the next paragraph."

_Damn – I gotta go. I'll talk to you guys later._

_Yup. Take care._

_Awesome job, Chroma!_

_Thanks._

Yoshino got up from her desk and began to recite from the textbook in clear, somewhat mechanical English while the teacher looked on approvingly.

A sharper-eyed person might have noticed that she was barely even looking at the book, but she was standing near the back of the room, and the students surrounding her were too busy trying to follow along to pay much attention.

Most of Yoshino's brain was still focused on distributing her spoils; it was an incredibly simple task to call up the textbook, which she'd had memorized for months now, and replay the correct portion using her speech center. She'd even glance down at the page every so often to make it look as though she was really reading.

She wondered when Principal Nakajima would become aware that his exploits with his secretary had escaped onto the Net, and she hoped that the moment would be captured on camera as well, so she could watch later. Not that she had any personal interest, as she'd never met the man or even attended the school of which he was in charge, but when she took on a job, she liked to see it through to the finish. Projects like these were one of the few ways she had of keeping herself awake in school, anyway.

If her companions had known that she was, at that very moment, sitting in a 7th grade classroom trying desperately to keep her eyes open, they probably would have fallen all over themselves.

She didn't know them personally; they were high school boys she'd met online. They'd got to talking, mentioned a couple of rumors about their principal that had been floating around, and she'd offered her talents toward their cause. To them she was Chroma, a very talented and rather mercurial female hacker, and anyone who tried to find out more about her would have a few particularly nasty viruses to deal with.

Yoshino came to the end of the section and took her seat again.

"Very good…Amane, you next."

A boy two desks to the right stood up and began to read, with nowhere near the same competence.

Yoshino sighed and dove back into the Net. This was her last class of the day, and after classroom duties she could finally go home.

* * *

Two hours later and Yoshino was packed tightly into a train car, headed for the housing complex in which she lived. As she'd been changing to go home for the day, one of her classmates had very shyly asked if she'd like to come over to her house with some other girls and study together; Yoshino had politely declined, saying that her mother needed her to run an errand, although she truly appreciated the offer.

She didn't have much in common with girls her age, anyway; they were all clothes and boys and romance novels. Try talking to them about things that were actually interesting, like chimera viruses or the newest generation of defense barriers and their features, and they'd change the subject as quickly as they could.

They only ever invited her in the first place because she was _special_, and they'd been instructed to be as nice and as welcoming toward her as they could. To the students' credit, they had all risen to the occasion magnificently, but their polite understanding had long since begun to make Yoshino feel a bit smothered.

Her parents were little better.

"I'm home," she called, stepping through the front door and leaving her shoes in the entryway.

"Yoshino?"

Her mother poked her head out of the kitchen.

"How was school today?"

"Fine."

"Did you get the score back for your math test?"

Yoshino rummaged around in her bag, and then held out a sheet of paper.

"_Another_ hundred? That's wonderful! Although with all the time you spend studying, it's hardly any surprise…"

Her mother bent down toward her slightly.

"You know," she said quietly, "I won't mind, and I'm sure your father won't mind either, if you get a score that's less than perfect one of these days…You just seem to spend all of your time with your schoolwork, and while that's hardly a bad thing, it's not bad to spend time with friends once in a while too."

"I know," said Yoshino. "Maybe next time Ruriko asks me to go out during the weekend, I'll take her up on it. Right now I've got homework to do, though.

A little frown briefly creased her mother's face. Yoshino had seen it before and understood it perfectly; she had spent too much of her young life around adults, and it came out to an almost off-putting degree in her speech.

"I see. Back to work for you, then, I guess. I'll call you when dinner's ready."

"Thanks."

She turned and set off up the stairs, then walked into her bedroom and closed the door. As soon as she'd changed out of her school uniform, she turned on her desktop terminal and opened a browser window and a text document, and then flopped down on her bed.

The terminal was just a cover; after Yoshino's first prosthetic body resizing, an inhibitor code was supposed to have been placed within her cyberbrain, to limit her networking abilities, but it had taken her all of three seconds to get rid of the stupid thing. As long as she pretended to use the desktop, no one would be the wiser.

She checked her e-mail; it was the usual mishmash of job offers and correspondence from other members of the hacker community which she frequented, plus a note from Chakkun thanking her again for her assistance. Setting aside the messages she needed to respond to and the jobs that looked interesting, Yoshino cleared out the rest and closed the e-mail client, then pulled out her books and got to work on her assignments for the evening.

It was still light out when she finished, and not nearly time for dinner yet. She sighed and stepped out into the hallway, then headed downstairs. Her mother was in the sitting room, watching the news.

"Mom, is it okay if I go for a walk before Dad gets home?"

"I suppose – just don't go too far, all right?"

"I won't," said Yoshino. "I'll be back soon."

She stepped into her sneakers and walked out the front door.

* * *

A warm breeze ruffled Yoshino's hair as she strode along the city streets with her hands in the pockets of her shorts. The sun had only just started to set, and already Niihama glowed with neon and fluorescent light.

She ducked into an alley, and then pulled herself up onto a fire escape bolted to the brick wall. It was funny, she thought as she climbed nimbly up the side of the building; five years ago she had struggled even to stand.

The metal rails only brought her as far as the uppermost window; from there she had to improvise, grabbing on to a drain pipe and using it to pull herself up to the roof. Once she was over the ledge, she climbed on top of the building's air conditioner, and then leapt onto a service ladder on the side of the next building over. As long as she kept her body moving, she would feel no exhaustion.

Finally, two rooftops later, she felt that she had climbed far enough, and sat down with her back against a railing. Her vision blurred and darkened as a sudden spasm of tiredness washed over her, but it soon passed, and then she was free to look down at the city below.

The intricate patterns of alternating static and moving light reminded her of the Net.

Five years. She wondered if she would have had the will to keep going for even that long without it. No matter what kind of difficulties she'd been having in the physical world, she had always been able to escape into the Net and stay there for as long as she needed. It was so easy to understand; everything was governed by protocol and processes, and if you knew those, you could tell that world to do whatever you wanted it to.

Well, with a few limits. You couldn't find something that didn't exist.

For nearly a year after she'd learned the truth about the accident, Yoshino had searched everywhere she could think of for her identity, spending most of her time deep within the Net. News reports, police reports, insurance claims…she sifted through them all for any scraps she could piece together into a coherent picture. She worked against the complete list of passengers aboard the plane that had crashed, ticking them off one by one when she'd collected enough information to prove that none of them had been her.

Unfortunately even the most thorough of searches could only take her so far - after all of her effort, there were still four possible names whose owners fit all of the proper criteria and no way to narrow them down any further. No extended family had ever come to collect her, either, which was why she had been placed with the Tanaka family once she'd completed her rehabilitation.

That had been three years ago.

They were nice people. A little overbearing, but not in an obnoxious way; they cared for her, took pride in her achievements, and worried on her behalf, as if she had been their daughter all her life. They were also willing to trust her and give her space to do as she liked, and after two years with doctors and nurses breathing down her neck, Yoshino found that freedom nothing short of heavenly. She showed her appreciation by acting responsibly and keeping her parents informed of her activities.

At least other than where her Net use was concerned, but, she reasoned, everyone was entitled to a few secrets here and there.

Yoshino stood up and leaned against the railing with her arms folded across her chest. She didn't understand it; she had everything she needed to build a happy, productive life for herself.

Why did she still feel so empty and aimless inside?

"The fact that you're feeling these things is a good sign," Dr. Hosono had said during the most recent of their bimonthly meetings. "It's completely normal for someone your age to feel a sense of displacement or loss; as you grow older and gain more experience in the world, the feeling will diminish."

_No,_ Yoshino had wanted to say, _it's like it goes deeper than that,_ but this would require revealing more of her inner self than she was comfortable. As had been her habit for years, she merely smiled and resolved to unravel the emotional mysteries on her own time.

She looked straight down over the edge of the railing, at the sheer drop below her. The toes of her sneakers peeked out over the top of the concrete ledge.

She'd read about people with military-grade prosthetic bodies who could jump long distances and from great heights – it was something she was curious to try, but she knew her body would never stand up to that amount of abuse.

She wondered what it would feel like to be in a state of free fall, with the wind tugging at her clothes and hair while gravity dragged her downward.

A great longing built in her to find out someday.

The sun had almost finished setting, and the lights from the city below glowed more brightly than ever. Yoshino sighed; she should probably think about heading home.

She let go of the railing, stretched herself, and then began the slow, careful descent to the sidewalk.

* * *

(A/N: Moving right along...

I guess I lied a little; this chapter was mostly meandering as well ;;; Important action-y stuff happens next chapter, though! For real! Promise!

Chroma cameo because Chroma is utterly fabulous and needs more love. We should all have online avatars that are just us in spandex with our eye and hair colors swapped. -dreamy sigh-

To anybody who gets the Black Magic pun, outside of the obligatory reference to another thing that Masamune Shirow was responsible for and which must consequently be referenced in every other adaptation of his work, ever, I am deeply sorry. It just seemed like such a punk-ass hacker kid thing to say that I temporarily forgot that I was writing in English and should therefore refrain from making stupid wordplay jokes in other languages.

Finally, because I was asked, there are three more chapters to go after this one. Hang in there, and thanks for reading!)


	6. Year 10

**Year 10:**

After her very first one, Yoshino had learned to dread body resizings. The procedure itself wasn't painful, but it was dreadfully uncomfortable in a spiritual sort of way, having her consciousness shunted between pieces of hardware like that. Then there was the adjustment period, wherein everything ached and she had to go through the delicate process of fine-tuning her control software all over again. Finally, once that was all over with, there was the awkwardness of showing up at school having magically aged three years and watching everyone pretend to not be disturbed by it.

The hospital staff who managed the transfers knew this very well, and it was quite a surprise when the girl came racing into the main office, her round, childish face alight with excitement, skidding to a halt at the front desk.

"Where is it? Can I see?"

"Hello to you too, Yoshino," said Houko, smiling sardonically. "You certainly got here quickly."

"'Course I did!" said Yoshino. "I've been waiting for six whole months! My very last body swap – no more of this stupid changing shells like a hermit crab, or trying to get people to take me seriously when I look like a freaking preteen! Bring it on!"

"Well, I can hardly say no to such enthusiasm…"

She sighed and got up from the desk, motioning for Yoshino to follow.

"Still, doesn't it seem a little soon for this to be your last resizing?" said Houko as they walked down the corridor.

"Eh," said Yoshino dismissively, waving her hand. "Dr. Murata said he'd planned on me having another two, but I decided to wait a little longer and then get the final one over with all at once."

"Fair enough," said Houko.

She stopped in front of a door near the end of the hallway and punched a code into the keypad; it slid aside, revealing a white room tangled with transfer equipment.

"I don't think it's even been unpacked yet…I called you as soon as the delivery truck showed up, and they only just had time to move it in here. Ah, there we go."

She gestured to a long, flat, metal crate that sat against the far wall. Yoshino stared at it for a moment, and then practically dove for the case.

"How do you get this open…ah!"

She unsnapped the fasteners holding the lid shut and heaved it upward, then pushed aside a layer of plastic sheeting.

"…._Goodness_," said Houko quietly, peering over her shoulder.

"I know, right?" breathed Yoshino.

They both stood in silence for a moment, staring at the form that lay in the shaped foam packing, covered only by a light blue hospital gown. As Yoshino's eyes swept across it, an odd, aching feeling rose inside of her, and her fingers began to tremble.

_That's going to be me. And then…_

"I've seen that face on service androids before – didn't you want to get a custom one made?" said Houko, turning to Yoshino.

"Nah," said Yoshino, reaching forward to pull back one of the body's eyelids; a rich red iris, centered with a tiny dot of a pupil, gazed up at her dully, and she smiled. "I looked into it, but I just couldn't find one that I thought would suit me."

She ran the tips of her fingers around the curve of its cheek, feeling the fine textures in its skin. The detail was incredible; Yoshino's hand moved down to the neck, drifting along the fine chords there, and then over the shoulder to the arm, pressing lightly against the synthetic muscle mass, to the hand, admiring the creases in its palm and the neatly trimmed, semitranslucent fingernails.

This wasn't one of the dolls she'd jumped between throughout her adolescence; this was a woman's body.

Yoshino let go of the hand quickly.

"So," she said, looking up at Houko. "When can you move me in?"

"Why, tomorrow, of course," said Houko, giving the girl a knowing smile. "Unless that's too soon for you?"

Yoshino's fingertips gave another twitch, and she hid her hands behind her back, trying to make it look natural.

"You're going to make me wait even _longer_? Jeez…"

Houko laughed and folded her arms across her chest.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I will call Dr. Murata right now_,_ so he can start prepping your new body for the transfer."

"Fine…"

Houko reached into her pocket and removed her phone, then unfolded it and entered a number.

_Even though they're both cyberized, they still use external devices to communicate…_

They weren't the only ones, though; only a very limited number of the people Yoshino knew who had cyberbrains actually used them to their full potential, and these were mostly hackers, or people who otherwise immersed themselves in the Net anyway. Even her own parents, when speaking to each other across distances, would still call or send messages as opposed to just opening up a channel. It was baffling.

Was it out of habit, or were they all simply afraid to be connected?

"All right, I'll tell her," said Houko, and snapped her phone shut again.

"Dr. Murata's on his way here; he's got a couple of things to finish up first. He says you'll have to stay the night, though, so go ahead home and pack. You won't miss anything."

"Okay!" said Yoshino, grinning. "I'll be right back!"

She turned and bolted from the room.

* * *

It was 2:38 AM, and Yoshino lay on her side, wide awake, staring at the wall.

Two thick cables protruded from the back of her neck, snaking across her pillow and then looping up to a terminal next to the bed. The terminal was running a series of programs to prepare the contents of her cyberbrain for transfer; first it had catalogued and sorted the data, and now it was in the process of compressing everything into more manageable pieces.

As he'd run diagnostics on the new body, Dr. Murata had explained to her that they hoped to keep streamlining the process to the point that a patient could come in, undergo a transfer, and then leave, all within a few hours. It seemed as though his team had made some good progress already; Yoshino remembered her last switch as having been much more time-intensive. Now it could all be done in the background while she slept.

If she'd been able to sleep. She was too excited.

So far, everything was going according to plan. All of the potential wrinkles were straightening themselves out; she'd made sure of it when she had gone home to gather her things for the night and explain to her parents what was going on.

There was only one thing left to do.

The terminal next to her bed chimed an alert, and then settled back into its idle mode. The compression was finished, and Yoshino was ready for transfer.

Once she was certain that no processes would be disrupted, Yoshino removed the cables from her neck and slowly slid out of bed. Padding lightly against the tiles, she moved to the door and opened it, then stepped out into the corridor, using her memories of the place to find her way to the transfer room. She entered the code into the lock, and then ducked inside.

Her body was already hanging in one of the bays; Dr. Murata had left it there, hooked up to a diagnostic terminal, to prime the cyberbrain for neural activity.

Slowly, Yoshino approached it.

She stood there for several minutes, her lips parted slightly.

"Hey…" she whispered at last.

There was another pause, and then she sighed resolutely; this was her last chance to be a child, and she was going to make the most of it.

"I…I guess it's a little weird…me talking to you like you've actually got someone inside you already…Especially since after tomorrow we're going to be the same person anyway…"

She took a deep breath.

"But it's more like…_you're_ not going to become _me_…_I'm_ going to become _you_."

She reached out and took the body's hand; it hung limply in her own.

"So…I guess I just wanted to say…take good care of me…."

Her voice was shaking. She reached into the pocket of her pajama pants and removed a flat case, from which she drew an elegant silver watch. Carefully, she fastened it around her body's wrist.

"I was gonna get you a ring or a necklace, or something a bit more ladylike, but then I thought you might prefer something more practical...And now that I've seen you, I know you're really not the type anyway."

Yoshino's hand slid back down to grasp the fingers of the hand she was holding.

"Don't ever forget about me, okay? No matter where you go or what happens to you...don't forget…"

She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around the narrow waist and pressing her cheek against the firm smoothness of the chest. After a few minutes had passed, she looked up at the face that was hanging over her, eyes closed as if in sleep.

Even though it was average in every respect, just a generic-model face, there was something heartbreakingly beautiful about its simplicity. Yoshino smiled; she'd had a name picked out for this body for months already, ever since she had formed her plan, but she'd never thought it would fit so perfectly.

It was now 3:02 AM. Yoshino pulled away from her body and stepped back.

"I'll see you in the morning. G'night."

She crept out into the corridor and back to her room, then crawled into bed, hooking herself up to the terminal once more.

In a little less than six hours, after a few short tests to make sure everything was working correctly, the procedure would begin, and she would no longer be Yoshino.

It was a long while before she finally fell asleep.

* * *

No matter how the process advanced, or how quickly they were able to do it, it always felt basically the same. Like being thrown into an empty room without any of your senses and left to stumble around, groping in the darkness, praying you'd find the exit eventually, all while being relentlessly dragged in directions you didn't necessarily want to go.

It was the feeling of helplessness that had always bothered me the most, and when light touched my eyelids again, I couldn't open them fast enough.

The world hit me like a physical blow to the face. The colors were bright and clean, and everything stood out in sharp relief, from the scuff marks on the floor to the tiny motes of dust drifting in the air.

In front of me was my old body, clamped into the other transfer bay, her head lolling rather unpleasantly to the side now that she was empty. As I stared at her, I felt the tiniest twinge of regret.

_No turning back now._

"All systems appear to be functioning…."

That was Dr. Murata's voice, although it was much fuller than I'd ever heard it before. His footsteps shuffled out from behind the monitors, stopping just to my left.

"Well? How is it?"

"I can't move yet. Unplug me and I'll let you know."

That was when the change really sank in; the first time I heard my new voice come rolling luxuriously out of my throat. It was so gorgeous that I wanted to talk forever just so I could keep listening to it.

Dr. Murata scuttled back to his workstation, and shortly after I felt the cables retract from the back of my neck. Slowly, I raised my head and stepped forward.

The sudden increase in height was definitely going to take some getting used to.

I took another step. There was a lovely fluidity to this body's movement that I'd never felt before; it was beautifully balanced, and the feedback from the control software provided a smooth, pleasant sensation of gentle resistance. It would be interesting to run the thing through its paces and find out what it was capable of.

The increased skin sensitivity was wonderful as well. I made a mental note to test it more thoroughly later on, once I'd secured some time to myself.

Dr. Murata was watching me from behind his monitors; he looked quite different now that I was actually on eye level with him. I smiled.

"It's completely brilliant."

Even if the body had been junk, it almost would have been worth it for that voice.

"No software issues?" Dr. Murata consulted his screens once again. "Your vitals seem to be functioning correctly…"

"None," I said. "I'll probably make a few tweaks here and there once I get more of a feel for it, but so far, so good."

"Fantastic!" he said, and brought his hands together before him. "You should step outside; there's quite a crowd waiting to see you, you know."

I tugged at the cotton smock I was wearing. "I think I'll get dressed first."

"Oh…of course."

I made my way to the screened-off corner of the room and ducked underneath the curtain, still marveling at how light and loose my strides were. My bag was sitting in the corner where I'd left it before the transfer – I reached inside and removed the new set of clothes I'd brought.

Before I put them on, I couldn't help staring at myself for a few minutes in the mirror that had been courteously placed on the wall. In an incredibly short span of time I'd gone from being barely twelve years old to…well, _this_.

Maybe it would have been better to fit in another resizing.

It was too late now.

I tugged my jeans up over my hips, and then drew the sweater down over my head. The cable pattern on the thing stretched hideously out of shape as it settled across my breasts, and I sighed resignedly; it was just something I'd have to get used to. I ran my hand over my chest to smooth it out a bit.

My sleeve pulled back, exposing the silver watch hanging from my wrist. I hooked one finger underneath the band, pulling the face around to where I could see it.

_Don't forget…_

Already it seemed as if someone entirely different had spoken those words to me. I brushed my thumb across the watch face and smiled.

_I won't forget._

* * *

It seemed like everyone I'd ever come in contact with had turned out to see my new body; after my mother had finished fussing over me, she stepped aside to let Dr. Hosono take her turn, and once she was done I had to deal with an entire herd of various nurses and assistants I'd met at some point and whom I only vaguely remembered. As I listened to them paying the same incredulous complements over and over, mostly relating to how I was now taller than all of them, I wondered briefly what had happened to poor, broken little Hideo. I knew he'd finally decided to get prosthetics too, but shortly afterward he'd been taken somewhere else at the request of the relative who had custody, or something like that, and he hadn't bothered to get in touch at all.

I'd sort of given up on the paper cranes after I had found out that he'd left; I wondered if perhaps this body could manage them.

Once I had managed to escape the mob and get home, it was time for another round of assessment from my father, although refreshingly, he'd been more interested in the performance of my new cyberbrain than anything else. That I'd been happy to discuss.

I'd always enjoyed talking with my father, though, when he was around; he was quiet, but in a strong, thoughtful way, as if he always waited to speak until he had something to say that was worth saying. It was a rare quality, and I respected it immensely. I especially loved how perfectly he matched my mother; he kept her calm through her constant flustering, and she kept him from getting too lost in his own head when he was mulling over something.

I was going to miss them.

Maybe I didn't have to do this. I could at least wait another couple of years.

No. The plans were made already, and I had an appointment to keep.

It was a little past midnight. I sat on my bed with my knees pulled up to my chest.

My room was completely empty; I'd been disposing of my possessions piece by piece for months. Some of the more anonymous things I'd been able to give away, like my clothes and stuffed animals, but everything else I'd had destroyed.

I was deep inside my cyberbrain, checking and double-checking that everything was in place.

No problems so far.

_Execute._

A message sprang forward, splitting itself along the infinite paths of the net, delivering a copy of itself to anyone who had more than just fleeting visual memories of me. When they opened the message, those memories would be erased.

While my virus spread, I dove into the MHLW database and deleted my entry there, then worked my way out to any other Nets that might still have had some record of me. The information melted away and became nothing.

In less than five minutes, Yoshino had ceased to exist. I had created a world where she had never been.

Slowly, I got up from the bed, looking around at my room for the last time. I slung a single bag over my shoulder, and then stepped out into the hallway.

I stopped briefly at the door to my parents' room and placed my hand against it.

"Goodbye."

* * *

Ten minutes' walk and then another twenty minutes on a train brought me to my immediate destination, a parking deck halfway across the city. I took the elevator up to the fourth level; it was deserted except for one car parked directly across from the landing, the color and license number of which was identical to the description that had been sent to me. I took a palm-sized remote out of my coat pocket and clicked it once.

The door unlocked.

I pulled it aside and slid into the driver's seat, setting my bag down on the passenger's side. A black case lay on the floor, blending inconspicuously with the carpet; I picked it up and flipped it open, revealing a driver's license and an ID badge sitting on top of 500,000 yen in cash.

As promised.

Time to get going.

I started the car's ignition and backed smoothly out of the parking space, relying on control software to do so, since I'd never driven before in my life. Guided by preprogrammed reactions, I eased the vehicle down the spiraling ramps and then out onto the road, following the map that I had pulled up in my cyberbrain.

Seven hours to Fukuoka.

It had all started a year ago.

I was used to attempts on my attack barriers from other hackers of varying skill levels, and tracing their identities after the fact had always fascinated me. One day I'd noticed that an abnormal amount of the attacks were coming from the Ministry of Defense offices.

Apparently I'd attracted the attention of someone important.

My immediate response had been to go to ground, and I'd sent messages to the people I worked with to do the same. Maybe if I went dormant, the contact would stop.

When it had just increased, I had finally decided to meet it head on.

I'd waited for the opposing barrier to come in contact with mine, at which point I had rammed into it, forcing my consciousness over the ghost line of its user.

_All right, I'm listening._

My would-be attacker had shown no sign of surprise. It had occurred to me then that I might just have fallen into a trap, but I'd been curious enough to wait it out a little longer.

"_Chroma", I presume?_

_The one and only. Who are you?_

_You haven't seen for yourself yet? Come now, I expected better from you._

Well, he'd asked for it; I dove further into my contact's mind.

_Hisashi Nakamura – director of the Ministry of Defense's counterintelligence unit?_

_The one and only._

I'd been a hair away from activating my barrier and frying his brain to a crisp.

_So did you just call to make fun of me, or was there something else you wanted?_

_I want to offer you a job._

_Oh? Are you sure you're not just trying to get me to reveal my identity so you can have me arrested? I'm not stupid, you know._

_I've already allowed you limited access to my mind - I'd think this would be reason enough for you to trust me to some extent. If you'd rather not take my offer, you have that option; however, I feel it would be worth your time to hear me out._

_Fine, then. Thirty seconds. Convince me._

_Very well. I've been following your work loosely for the last few years, and your talents are, quite honestly, beyond my understanding. You move through the Net in ways that neither I nor my team has ever seen before, using basic consumer equipment, no less. I'd be very interested to see what you could accomplish by combining your gifts with our technology._

_What I could accomplish for __**you**__, you mean, against people like __**me**__. Sorry, but I have no intention of becoming a traitor just for some new toys – I'll pass._

_My team doesn't concern itself with petty hackers; I'm not asking you to turn on anyone. As an agent of the Ministry of Defense, you'd be working with a free rein on cases that won't ever even see the light of day. And the equipment would only be part of the deal; your pay would also be quite respectable. _

It was at that point that I'd paused to think for the first time; there had been a few jobs here and there where I'd been offered a percentage of the net profit, but most of it I'd taken on purely for my own amusement.

_I'm prepared to offer you two million yen up front for your first assignment._

I'd never considered that what I did was worth any amount of money, let alone that much.

_What happens if I say no?_

_If you refuse, we disconnect, and you go about your life having turned down an extremely lucrative career. The eye of the Ministry of Defense will remain upon you, of course, as an uncontrollable potential threat, and when we develop the right technology, we __**will**__ eliminate that threat as we see fit._

_You just said that you don't even understand what I can do; how are you ever going to get machines to do it better?_

_Maybe we'll find someone else who can do the things you can; someone who won't turn down what is an extremely generous offer._

_And maybe you won't._

_Perhaps. But do you want to take that chance and spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder?_

He had a point. I'd felt as if my brain shell was contracting in on itself, and a cold shiver raced down my spine.

_Still, it's your decision. Think it over; when you have an answer, feel free to contact me – I'll be waiting._

I did think it over. I had agonized about it for nearly six months.

On one hand I'd have to work as part of a team, something I despised.

On the other, it sounded as though the team would leave me alone for the most part, the work would be interesting, and I'd be embarrassingly well paid for it.

There was the option of completely destroying the Chroma façade and re-emerging as someone else, but I'd scrapped that plan - if the Ministry had found me once, they would just find me again. Giving up hacking entirely was completely unthinkable; the Net had been my world for as long as I could remember. What other work could I ever do?

It was around then that Dr. Murata had started to talk about my last body resizing. All at once, the plan had exploded into my mind.

I would no longer have the safe anonymity of an alternate persona to hide behind. Taking this job meant that I myself would need to become anonymous.

What better way to do so than with an ageless, easily modified prosthetic body?

I had already scripted a simulation virus with which I could purge Chroma from the Net; all I needed to do was finish it, and I would be free to rewrite myself however I chose.

All I really needed was a name; the rest would follow naturally. My new self would need something much more basic and unassuming than that ego trip of a name I currently wore.

Of Beauty. What a presumptuous thing to call such a plain child.

Base; elemental; plain.

Plain Child.

It had been this new self who had dug Nakamura's contact information out of Yoshino's memory and called him.

* * *

The sun was well past the horizon when I arrived at the sprawling Defense Ministry complex. The drive was blocked by a gate, but when I flashed my new ID at the man on duty, he nodded and let me through. I left my car in a space near the building and strode up the front steps to the main atrium. I stopped there for a moment to get my bearings, and then headed off toward the rear of the complex, to the cluster of offices that had been mentioned in my instructions.

I walked up to the desk of the receptionist there; she was an android, and when she met my eyes I had the sudden bizarre feeling of just having looked into a mirror.

"Yes?"

"I have a meeting scheduled with Mr. Nakamura; could you please tell him I've arrived?"

The android got up from her seat and bowed graciously.

"Of course, ma'am. Your name?"

It trembled on the tip of my tongue, until the rich, deep waves of my voice finally pushed it forward.

"Motoko Kusanagi."

* * *

(A/N: Longest chapter I've written so far for this - I think I'm trying to get all of my writing out before I go back to school or something :P That and I've been really looking forward to this chapter ever since I started this story; originally this was going to be the whole thing, but then I started thinking of some more vignettes that I wanted to write and wound up with all of the other stuff as well. I hope nobody minds.

I could go on for pages and pages and pages about why _Ghost in the Shell_ is the greatest thing ever conceived by man (although I guess I kind of do already; isn't that what fanfic is for?), but I think its genius can be summed up entirely in the name "Motoko Kusanagi", and how stupid and wonderful it is. When you first hear it it sounds like the kind of thing a 13-year-old might name her self-insert _Inuyasha_ OC, but then you start deconstructing it, and the depth to which it fits the character is actually kind of amazing and brilliant. The basic meaning for 素 (moto) is 'elementary' or 'principle', but if you take it back a little further you get 'plain', giving you 'elementary child' or 'plain child'. Stretch that out a little more and you wind up with 'naked child', and that's the part where my head starts exploding from awesome.

Final thought: opening your mouth and having Mary McGlynn's voice come out? omg. _omg_. I would die.

Atsuko Tanaka not so much, but that's a rant for another time.)


	7. Year 15

**Year 15:**

I lay prone on the ridge, half buried in the snow that was already on the ground, with what was still falling from the sky threatening to bury the rest of me fairly soon. My assault rifle was strapped to my back so I wouldn't lose it between the white-out and the dull twilight; the only thing I really could have used it for at that moment anyway was the scope, and my eyes were good enough that I didn't need it.

They were trained on the little camp in the valley below. It looked deserted; the tent material was thick enough that no light came through.

_Saito; what do you see?_

_Four heat signatures. Two human, one cyborg, and then something that looks like a stove._

_What are they doing?_

_Trying not to freeze to death, from the look of it._

That was about the only thing one could do right now; the Western China winters were brutal, and the only reasons to go outside after sundown were a death wish or orders from a superior officer.

_Ishikawa, have they sent any transmissions?_

_Nothing. I'm fairly certain they're cut off; the town they're trying to get to is still another week away on foot, and I'm not picking up any other cyberbrain activity in this region._

_Okay; they've been set up for a good hour now. Li's probably going to send his cyborg out to scan the area within another half an hour. Saito, as soon as you can line up a shot, take him out. I'll scoot down there and clean up the rest._

_Roger._

Wei Li had been the commander of one of the area's largest guerilla forces. We'd managed to mop up most of his people in a raid earlier that day, but their leader had escaped with a couple of his followers, and was now making his way east to regroup. The objective was to intercept him before he found safe haven, by any means necessary.

My favorite words to hear at the end of any briefing.

Thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds later, the tent flap shook, and right on cue, the large, bulky shape of the cyborg emerged into the night, standing out quite clearly against the field of white. He stood still for exactly thirty seconds, and then began to stalk the perimeter of the camp.

I tensed beneath my blanket of snow, ready to make my move.

A single shot echoed across the valley, and the cyborg crumpled, his head exploding into a dark spray.

At the same time, I launched myself over the ridge, leaving a flurry of ice in my wake.

My boots touched rock after only a few seconds of falling, and I skidded down the slope, holding my arms out to the sides to steady myself and pushing forward where I felt traction. Once I was firmly back on the ground, I swung my rifle into position and charged toward the camp, moving as lightly through the snow as 140-plus kilos of military hardware could.

Everything was quiet. Li and his companion were staying put inside.

I leaped over the wreckage of the cyborg and drew my knife out of its shoulder holster, then sliced through the ties that held the tent closed and pushed the heavy canvas aside with the muzzle of my rifle.

Wei Li sat at the far side of the tent, huddled next to a charcoal firebox for warmth. His face poked out from the hood of a heavy parka; it held no defiance, only fear and defeat.

Next to him, wrapped in two or three blankets, was a woman perhaps a decade his younger. Her wide eyes were fixed on my rifle, and her knuckles were white as she clung to Li's arm.

There was no danger here.

"Get up," I said, motioning with my gun.

Neither of them moved.

"Come on," I growled. "Up, both of you. Now."

Li shifted slightly. My index finger creaked on the rifle's trigger.

His hand jerked out of the folds of his coat; in it was a pistol. At that moment, three things happened simultaneously.

He pressed the pistol's muzzle into the side of the woman's head.

The woman smiled at him.

My rifle spat a stream of bullets into his body.

Wei Li lay in a spreading pool of his own blood. The woman was slumped over next to him, a single hole in her skull.

_Threat neutralized – Saito, pack up and head back to base. I'll meet you there._

_Yes, ma'am._

As I left the tent, I kicked the firebox onto its side, sending a shower of blazing coals across the floor. Soon, flames were eagerly lapping at the canvas walls, the deep roar accompanied by the hiss of snow evaporating into steam.

A funeral pyre.

_Rest in peace._

I shouldered my rifle and melted back into the storm.

* * *

Two foil packets dropped onto the cot where I was sitting. I looked up; Ishikawa was standing over me, his brow furrowed in concern.

"It's been more than an hour since you got back – you should probably eat something."

"Right."

I knew from experience that he wasn't going to go away until I had, in fact, eaten something, so I reached for one of the packets, unwrapped it, and took a small bite of the contents.

The taste of synthetic chocolate melted across my tongue; not as good as the real thing, obviously, but so much better than the crap I'd been eating for the last several months that my eyes nearly rolled back into my head. Once the momentary euphoria had subsided, I turned to Ishikawa again.

"Thanks…where did you get this?"

"Never mind that," he said evenly, reaching down to give me a rough pat on the shoulder. "Happy fifteenth, kiddo."

Oh.

I sighed weakly. "That time of the year again, huh?"

"C'mon…don't tell me you're getting so old that you can't keep track of the date anymore. That's my job."

"You apparently already forgot last year, when I told you you didn't need to do anything special for me."

"Well, if you like, you can just think of it as a present from someone who's extremely grateful that his commanding officer hasn't gotten him killed yet."

I smiled thinly. "You're welcome, then. Don't push me."

Ishikawa barked out a short laugh, and then walked away, his hands in his pockets.

He was the only one who knew.

* * *

My first two years with the military counterintelligence unit were every bit as exciting and interesting as I'd thought they would be. It seemed as though I encountered a new type of virus or barrier maze pattern with each assignment I was given, which allowed me to expand my experience base far beyond what it had been when I'd started. As expected, I ran solo most of the time, relying only on my own barriers and decoys for protection, and to top it all off, I was living extremely comfortably in my very own apartment in one of Fukuoka's more exclusive neighborhoods.

In late 2019, I had been given a mission that was a quite different from the rest; I was to go undercover abroad with a GSDF unit in order to gather intelligence from a couple of security networks in North America. I was quite enthusiastic about the whole affair; I'd never left Japan before, and I was eager to see what kind of defense barriers the American Nets utilized. In preparation, I had transferred to a high-performance, military-use prosthetic body and undergone about three months of basic combat training, both to keep my cover intact and for my own personal protection.

I was only supposed to be overseas for six months, Nakamura had said; six months, and then I'd be sent back home.

Then the war had happened.

At first I'd just continued my work, operating under the assumption that when my six months were up, some arrangement would be made to get me off the battlefield and back to Japan. After seven months I'd sent a message to my superiors back at the Ministry of Defense asking, in more polite terms, obviously, what the hell was going on. I received a brief, snappish reply informing me that my orders had changed; I was of far more use to the GSDF than the counterintelligence unit at the moment, and I was to stay put for the time being.

Pretending to be a soldier and actually being a soldier were two completely different things, the latter of which I did not care for at all, and I had found this response so unacceptable that I'd stormed off to take it up with my commander.

"I don't see what's so difficult to understand here, Miss Kusanagi," he'd said, hesitating slightly, as most people did, on my name. "Your talents are widely varied, you have the ability to remain calm and think clearly under pressure, and the skill with which you control your prosthetics is like nothing I've ever seen before."

I hated when people talked about me that way, as if I was just a little person sitting in a chair inside my own head, pushing buttons and moving levers to make a machine respond.

"Why should it come as a surprise that the self defense forces would want to make use of your abilities?"

"With all due respect, sir," I said, "whatever you or anyone else may think of my abilities, the fact remains that this was not the job I was hired for."

"As I understand it, you were hired to operate that piece of equipment" –he gestured to my body—"for our purposes. Now, if the direction this job has taken is distasteful to you, you're welcome to terminate your contract; however, that equipment is government property, and I'm afraid I can't permit you to just run off with it. If you can somehow manage to arrange a prosthetic body transfer in this chaos, I'd be happy to discharge you, but until then, I think you'll find it in your best interest to continue your work as usual."

I was frozen, unable to move or respond. It was the first time I'd ever considered that my body didn't belong to me. I lived in it, I took care of it, and yet someone else could order it around and I'd have no choice but to follow along.

What had I done to myself?

"Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," I whispered.

* * *

There was nothing to do after that but survive.

I didn't like killing people; the first few times I'd had to do it, I'd been horrified. When it came down to it, though, it was me or them, and I'd struggled too hard for what life I had to let it be taken away by some foreign terrorist.

I wasn't sure whether or not to be proud of the fact that I was getting noticeably better at killing after only a month.

One thing I was thankful for was that the other members of my unit were all fairly decent, agreeable people; I kept to myself mostly, as had been my habit ever since I'd been in a position to do so, but the fact that they could be counted upon to work smoothly in tense situations was very reassuring. Even our superior, Major Itakura, was himself quite a good commander; despite the little run-in I'd had with him, I was genuinely sorry to see him taken out by a guerilla sniper somewhere in the American Southwest. We all had been, for those few seconds before the uncertainty of not having anyone to lead us anymore sank in.

By that point we were all thoroughly conditioned to function as a larger collective instead of individuals, and without someone at its head, that collective began to dissolve.

That was where my ability to work under pressure proved its worth.

"Akino, Takegawa, and Hirano! Circle around to the right! Ohkawa and Yamada, follow me! The rest of you provide cover fire!"

Issuing orders really hadn't been as hard as I'd imagined; I'd just told the rest of the unit to do what I would have done had there been eight of me. Soon the sniper had been dispatched, and we'd even flushed out his backup squad.

"Keep moving, everyone," I said. "We don't have far to go; just stay alert. There could be more."

Nobody so much as blinked. I turned to face the rest of the unit.

"Well?"

After a moment of silence, Takegawa stepped forward, speaking without the slightest trace of irony in his voice.

"Yes, Major."

* * *

Ishikawa came to my unit only a few months later. He was in basically the same situation as I was; a civilian contractor, he'd been drafted toward the start of the war due to his impressive skills, and he wasn't particularly thrilled about it.

Perhaps it wasn't any wonder that we got along almost at once.

It was also nice to have another hacker on my team; while I knew my way around most of the enemy com channel encryption patterns, Ishikawa had been working in communications since before there had even been a widespread Net, and on the occasion we came across some older piece of equipment that I was unfamiliar with, he could step in and take care of it. I was also impressed by how modest he tended to be about his abilities; it wasn't a personality trait I was used to seeing in this line of work.

"Eh," he'd said when I'd mentioned this to him. "It's nothing to be impressed by; you do something long enough, you get good at it. Simple as that. By the way," he had continued, turning toward me, "I'd like to know how a kid like you knows so much about barrier breaking."

"Well," I'd said, smiling slightly, "if you do something long enough, you get good at it, right? Also, I'm hardly a kid."

I wasn't even sure how old I was anymore; not that I'd ever really known to begin with. Did it matter?

"Oh, right, you're full-cyborg. That has to be nice, staying in your mid-20's forever…Every woman's dream, huh?"

"There are downsides."

"Mmm. So did you go prosthetic when you got into the army, or…?"

"Long before that."

My voice had gradually turned colder, and he'd picked up on it; he sat in silence for a few moments, and then looked up at me.

"So, Major…"

Somehow, that name had stuck with me, and I wasn't entirely sure why.

"Yes?"

"Who are you, anyway?"

"…Excuse me?"

"Come on, now," he'd said, raising one bushy eyebrow in a sardonic smile. "You can't expect me to believe that that name you use is real. Besides, I did a little searching, and 'Motoko Kusanagi' seems to have appeared out of nowhere three years ago, when she was first listed on the payroll of the Ministry of Defense."

I'd been instantly reminded of why I had so hated working with other hackers in the past. They made everything their business.

"So did you run background checks on the whole unit, or just me?"

"The whole unit; I like to know who I'm working with. Although I must say, you're by far the most interesting. Want to know something else strange I discovered?"

"What's that?"

"The appearance of Motoko Kusanagi lines up pretty neatly with the disappearance of a similarly gifted female hacker who went by the name of Chroma, and who'd reported contact from the Defense Ministry before she vanished."

He'd turned his face to the floor, away from my piercing glare.

"That's probably just a coincidence, though."

"Probably."

We'd sat in silence for a few moments.

"So," I'd said at last. "Anything else you've dug up that you want to share?"

"Not yet."

"Then I'll have to find more for you to do; you're clearly not busy enough if you've got time for wild goose chases."

"Yes, ma'am."

After that exchange, I had considered the subject closed; no matter how hard he looked, there was simply nothing left in the Net for Ishikawa to find. I'd made sure of that. Eventually he'd grow tired of searching and give up.

And then I'd learned just how dangerous it was to underestimate someone's tenacity.

We'd been on loan to the U.N. to aid in an escort mission with some British and American soldiers. It was the night before the unit was due to depart with our cargo, and I'd managed to slip outside for a few moments to sit and watch the sun set.

It was strange, I had thought, how it looked so much different from the ground in Mexico than it had from the rooftops in Niihama.

An odd ache had twisted up inside me, so suddenly that I'd been unable to force it back.

_I want to go home._

I'd heard a rustling behind me and turned around at once only to see Ishikawa pacing toward me, an envelope hanging from his hand.

"Hey."

"Hey," he'd replied, settling himself next to me on the dirt. "Nice night, huh?"

"Mmhm."

"Mail came today," he'd said, holding up the much-abused envelope.

"Oh? Did you get anything interesting?"

"Kind of."

He'd drawn a folded piece of paper out of the envelope, then held it in front of me.

It was a clipping from a faded, crinkled magazine; the date on the top corner had read September of 2009. There was no text on the rest of the page; only a single image of a little girl sitting at a table, a pen held delicately in her hand.

I had immediately recognized the cut and the color of her hair, and the ugly visible joints of her wrists and elbows. The way her brilliant red eyes were focused on the sheet of paper before her, half there and half inside her own lonely, brilliant sea of light.

"That's you, isn't it?"

My silence had been an answer in itself.

"Thought so."

He'd sighed and tucked the clipping back into his pocket.

"You're more of a kid than I thought; barely even a teenager in cyborg terms. Don't worry, though; I'm not going to tell anyone."

It had been a few minutes more before I'd found my voice.

"How did you find out?"

"You were very thorough, I'll give you that," he'd said, smiling. "But you're still young enough to have forgotten about records kept on printed media. You mentioned before that you'd gone full prosthetic a while before your military career; it was simple enough to have one of my contacts compare physical records of civilians with prosthetic bodies to the records currently being kept online by the MHLW. I figured that you'd be the one who disappeared."

The sun had moved below the horizon, leaving a rose-colored wash across the dusty blue of twilight.

"I won't ask why you did it; honestly, I don't even want to know. That's your business and yours alone."

I'd nodded slowly, curling up so that my arms were around my knees, and my chin was resting on top of them. I had expected Ishikawa to leave, now that the damage was done, but he'd stayed there, sitting quietly at my side, the warm weight of his hand resting solidly on my shoulder as I watched what remained of the dusk fade into night.

That had been two years ago.

* * *

The wind and the snow pounded against the walls of the base; I'd been a lot of places in the last two years, but China was probably the one I'd be the least sorry to leave. There was nothing here but snow, more snow, and people trying to kill you.

My thoughts drifted back to Wei Li and the woman.

He'd killed her to protect her from me, even though I'd meant her no harm. Better for her to be shot by one of her own than taken into custody by an enemy soldier, and from the look on her face as she'd died, she had felt the same.

As much as I regretted the loss of life, the strength of their conviction was impressive.

I wondered what that woman had been to Li; a wife? A lover? A sister? Probably not a daughter; she hadn't been that young.

I wondered if I would ever have anyone in my life that I would feel such a strong desire to protect.

I thought of Ishikawa and his dogged determination to understand and then support me, even when I didn't realize I needed it, and Saito, my newest acquisition, whose life I'd spared and who was very honorably still paying me back for it. I thought of everyone who'd ever addressed me as 'Major', even though my actual rank, insofar as such things applied to me, was something closer to that of a corporal.

I'd certainly be able to protect them without killing them, though.

Speaking of which…

I got up from my cot and strode to the other end of the long, low bunkhouse; Saito was there, holed up in a corner with his rifle disassembled and spread out on a cloth, cleaning and polishing each piece. He gave no sign that he'd noticed me as I approached, but that was nothing unusual.

"You have the first night watch shift tonight, don't you?" I said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll cover it for you. Get some sleep instead."

His hand paused on its way down the rifle barrel.

"That's not necessary, ma'am."

"I think it is; you've spent long enough out in the snow today, and of the two of us, you're the one who's at greater risk of freezing out there. Stay in tonight."

Slowly, he turned his head toward me.

"Is that an order?"

I sighed. "If it needs to be."

"Fine. Thank you, Major."

"You're welcome."

I went off to track down my snow gear, and then began the arduous process of bundling myself into it. Even though I was, as I'd said, less susceptible to frostbite or hypothermia, it didn't mean I was immune to the cold entirely.

As I outfitted myself, my eyes landed on the silver watch that was fastened around the rail at the foot of my cot. It was too delicate a thing for me to wear regularly in this environment, but I always kept it where I could see it.

_Take good care of me…_

I tucked my hair up into my helmet, then fastened the strap beneath my chin and pulled the goggles down over my eyes.

_I'm sorry; I'm trying._

* * *

(A/N: I'll pretend I don't have a list of reasons why I love the _Stand Alone Complex_ continuity a million, bajillion times more than either the Oshii films or the manga, but if I did, the Major's relationship with Ishikawa, of all people, would totally be on it. Maybe not at the top, but definitely toward the high middle. I just love the way they josh each other around; you get this great sense of them having been around each other for a really long time and having that kind of understanding where they can tease and be all informal and stuff. I bet if anyone knows all of the Major's canonical backstory, it's Ishikawa.

Whether or not she told him anything voluntarily is up for debate, though.

Writing the dialogue in this chapter was a lot of fun. To keep everyone in character I force myself to read their lines in my head in that character's voice, and if it doesn't sound right, I tweak it until it does. It's amazing how much this helps.

One chapter left, folks! Stay with me!)_  
_


	8. Year 20

**Year 20:**

My internal clock woke me much earlier than I would have liked; even though my body didn't get tired, the bits of my brain that were organic did, and the rest just seemed to follow suit. It would have been one thing if my exhaustion was due to a long, hard night on the job, but no, I'd just been out late with my boyfriend and his coworkers. Again.

I crawled out of bed and stumbled for the shower, intensely grateful that hangovers weren't in my possible range of experiences.

By the time I'd gotten dressed, the scent of fresh coffee had made its way through the crack beneath the bedroom door, and I followed it helplessly, like a moth drawn to a flame. While my metabolism effectively neutralized any of the effects of alcohol, it did nothing about caffeine, and I was hurting. I slid the door aside and stepped out into the central room of the apartment.

Sugi was awake already, somehow, and sitting at the kitchen table, idly scanning the newspaper. He looked up as I ambled toward him, absently brushing my hair into place with my fingers.

"Good morning, beautiful. Didn't expect to see you up this early…"

"I was gonna get up before you so I could make you breakfast," I said, drawing my lips into a pout as I reached for a mug from the rack. "You beat me, though."

He laughed loudly.

"Babe, I would rather take another chance with that fence-climber who nearly took my hand off last week than with your cooking."

After my last attempt at domesticity, I honestly didn't blame him. He'd told me afterward that the apron had made up for it, though, so that was something.

"If you really want to know," I said, once I'd taken a good long sip of my coffee and cleared my head somewhat, "I've got a meeting in a little less than an hour with some guy from further up in the Ministry. I think I'm getting transferred again."

"Again?" said Sugi, without looking up from his paper. "Isn't this like the fourth time for you in the last two months?"

"Something like that," I said.

"Well, I don't blame them," said Sugi. "It takes an awful lot to put up with you for that long. That uniform's cute on you, though."

"Thanks."

I sighed.

"So, what are you up to today?"

"We've got some intel on a militant Chinese group that's been smuggling weapons into the country – probably gonna go bust 'em this afternoon or something."

"Sounds like fun. Think you'll be home late?"

"I dunno; we'll see how it goes. If you're back before me, though, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure – what is it?"

"Keep your uniform on until I get home; I wanna take it off of you."

He was so predictable sometimes.

I smiled. "Just for you."

"You're the best."

I finished the last of my coffee, then got up and set my empty mug in the sink.

"I should go; traffic's going to be a bitch, since it's so early."

Sugi rolled his eyes. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe traffic is so bad at this time because normal people usually head in to work before noon?"

"Sweetheart, please stop and consider how many aspects of my life could be called 'normal'."

I took my purse from its hook on the wall near the door, and then rummaged around inside it for my car keys.

"Have fun with your Chinese weapon smugglers – I'll see you tonight."

"Later, babe; stop pissing people off and maybe they'll stop transferring you all over the building."

"I love you too."

I stepped into my uniform heels, opened the front door, and then made my way downstairs to the garage.

The car that waited for me there was an inexpensive domestic model in plain, boring silver; I didn't really care for it, but I still preferred it to having my nice car marked up by careless passerby, or coveted by my careless boyfriend.

My relationship with Sugi was a puzzle, even to me. It was a no-strings-attached one-night stand that had somehow gone on for nearly a year, to the point where I'd decided to just move in and save myself the trouble of commuting. I couldn't say why we were together; we had very little in common, aside from our jobs, and our fights were apparently legendary among Sugi's companions in Public Security. I supposed it came down to the fact that having a regular boyfriend of any sort made me feel more validated as a human being, somehow, even if most of our meaningful interaction consisted solely of sleeping together after work.

There was also that vindictive thrill I got from using my body for wild, indiscriminate sex in my off hours; something about the gross misuse of government property just made me happy inside.

I parked in my designated space at the Ministry of Defense and walked as quickly as I could up the front steps and into the main atrium. In the past I had petitioned to be allowed to wear pants as part of my uniform instead of the stupid stride-limiting pencil skirt, but my superiors had repeatedly informed me that it simply wasn't appropriate.

The conference room where the meeting was to take place was located toward the front of the complex, in the wing usually reserved for interdepartmental guests; whomever I was here to see was either from a different ministry entirely, or he was so high up the chain that he didn't even work out of this building. Nobody had told me anything, of course; my orders were simply to be there at nine and to look presentable.

I arrived at five minutes 'til to find the door already closed; I raised my hand and knocked sharply against the wood paneling.

The door swung inward. I was surprised to see Nakamura himself standing there; I hadn't interacted with him much since he'd been appointed the head of Public Security Section 6.

"Miss Kusanagi," he said sharply, stepping to one side. "Please, come in."

I bowed and entered the room; it was fairly small, with just enough room for a sofa and two armchairs set around a low table, plus a large screen set into the wall. As Nakamura sat down in one of the chairs, I turned my attention to the man who occupied the other.

He was much older than the officers and ministry suits I normally dealt with; his face and hands were etched with lines, and what hair he had was gray, fading to white near the temples. His dark eyes were sharp and alert, and he made up for his small stature with a stern countenance; when he met my gaze, something about his bearing made me interpret his very presence there as a challenge.

I sank down onto the sofa and folded my arms across my chest.

"This is Daisuke Aramaki," said Nakamura, nodding politely to his guest. "He's one of the junior officers working under the Minister of Home Affairs. Mr. Aramaki, this is Motoko Kusanagi, who I'm sure requires no introduction."

"None at all," said Aramaki gruffly. "You can go now, Nakamura; I'm perfectly capable of handling this from here."

"Of course."

Nakamura got up and left the room. Aramaki's eyes followed him through the door, and then snapped back to me.

"Well well, Miss Kusanagi. Your reputation precedes you."

I wasn't quite sure what to say to that; fortunately, he hadn't finished.

"In your case, that's hardly a good thing."

He reached into the briefcase that leaned against his chair and withdrew a thick sheaf of papers.

"Your service record is certainly impressive; however, I've noticed the same criticisms appearing over and over again. 'Argumentative'," he read from the topmost sheet, "'ill disposed toward a team environment'…'headstrong'….'reacts negatively to confrontation'…"

He lowered the papers and looked up at me again.

"You've gathered an alarming amount of citations for insubordination, and every officer or department head for whom you've worked has found a unique way to describe you as essentially unmanageable. Your psychological evaluation ascribes to you a disturbing number of traits commonly associated with narcissism and sociopathy, bordering on psychopathy, which the professionals who handled it have very generously attempted to attribute to post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Now," he continued, after pausing briefly to clear his throat, "keeping all of this in mind…can you please explain to me why you remain in the employ of the Ministry of Defense?"

"My record should speak for itself on that point too, sir," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Over the years I've applied my talents for barrier breaking and data manipulation to many cases for the benefit of the Ministry-"

"That isn't what I meant," he said, cutting me off so smoothly that I actually stopped talking to listen. "Surely someone with abilities as widely varied as yours could find employment anywhere she pleased. What ties you to the Ministry?"

I remembered the conversation I'd had with Nakamura a decade ago.

"Security, sir. As long as I work for the government, I can do what I enjoy without fear of being penalized for it."

His eyes seemed to bore into mine.

"And do you enjoy it? Because to me, this file seems to describe someone so bored and frustrated with their place in life that they feel the need to continually test the limits of what they can get away with. You may speak freely, by the way," he said. "I'm in no position to reprimand you for it."

"Can I ask you something, then?" I said, barely holding back a snarl.

"Certainly."

"Is there any point to this conversation at all, besides trying to get inside my head?"

"Of course there is – would you be interested in leaving the Ministry of Defense and coming to work for me?"

That was certainly the last thing I'd expected.

"I've just recently been given authorization from the prime minister and the Home Affairs Ministry to form an unofficial ninth Public Security section, and I'd like you to act as the group's field commander. The prime minister intends for it to be an offensive paramilitary organization focused on detecting and preventing terrorist activity; to that end, I need someone with experience in both physical and information warfare, and you are more than qualified in both fields.

"Because this group would be unofficial, I imagine that its standards would be far more relaxed than what you've had to work with in the past; you would be above regulation, and everything that entails. You'll have all the equipment, space, and funding you require; I believe arrangements are being made at this moment to commandeer the top half of a building in Niihama for our offices."

I shifted slightly; I was tempted, but still skeptical.

"Who are the other members of your team?"

"I don't have any in mind at the moment. If you accept this position, I'll leave selection of the team members up to you."

There had to be some huge, horrific catch in here somewhere. I braced myself.

"What about my insubordination and narcissistic, sociopathic tendencies?"

"What about them?"

"I don't know, it just seems to me that they'd turn you away from offering me a job."

He studied me for a long moment.

"I'm offering you this job because, in spite of your numerous peculiarities, there isn't a single assignment in your records that you've failed to successfully complete. That's the person I want; I have a feeling the rest will sort itself out with time."

I fell silent, mulling the matter over in my head.

"You don't have to give me an answer at this moment; I'll give you some time to think about it."

He slid his card across the table, and then stood up.

"Please call me when you make your decision - I'll be waiting. It was nice meeting you."

He gathered up his briefcase and left the room.

* * *

_Sounds good to me – where do I get in on this?_

_I haven't agreed to anything yet!_

_It sure seems like you have. Why else would you have called?_

_Because I wanted to hear your thoughts about the situation before I made any decisions._

_Well, here they are; it sounds like a great opportunity. You should go for it. Get me on board if you can; private sector consultation sucks. Anyway, I've already done a background check on this guy; the whole situation seems pretty legit. His record's clean, too; none of the usual minor scandals associated with ministry higher-ups. The only thing I could dig up was that he divorced back in the late 2000's, but even there it seems like the case was initiated by his wife, so—_

_Ishikawa, do you ever actually do any __**work**__?_

_What do you think this is? I'm not you; I can't just walk up to a server and seduce it into giving me what I want._

_Thank God; I could have done without that mental image._

_I'd say that you'll wish you looked this good when you're my age, but you'll probably still be winning swimsuit competitions long after I'm dead and buried._

The channel fell into silence for a moment. Ishikawa's feelings of concern were leeching over into the link, breaking like waves against the rock wall of my bad mood.

_Stop worrying, okay? I'm like 25 or something by now; I can take care of myself. I don't need a job from someone who thinks it's a good idea to introduce himself by psychoanalyzing me._

_Actually, I think you do._

…_Excuse me?_

_All of that about your psych profile being a manifestation of your own dissatisfaction? I agree. You might not be able to see it, Major, but you're self-destructing. Obviously something's wrong._

_That's completely ridiculous._

_Is it? Look at yourself. The ministry pushes you from office to office because it can use you, but it can't find anyone willing to deal with how unreasonable you get, and I swear, when you call me to complain, it's like you have some kind of sick fetish for how miserable the whole thing makes you. And speaking of which, when are you going to stop living with that jackass you call a boyfriend? If you could hear some of the things he says about you to his friends at work…_

_...Did you seriously tap Section 1's communications just to spy on my boyfriend?_

_Might've. Anyway, you want to know why I worry about you? There you go._

_Gee, thanks. What are you, my father?_

_Somebody has to be._

I sighed in exasperation. Suddenly, I heard the rattle of a key turning in the lock on the apartment door.

_Well, I gotta go – my jackass boyfriend is home, and I'm still wearing a certain uniform that I promised him he could take off of me._

_Lovely. I'll talk to you later, then; feel free not to go into further detail about the rest of your evening._

_If you insist. Good night._

_Goodnight, princess._

I closed the channel, and then got up to meet Sugi at the door. He looked tired, although his expression cleared somewhat when he saw me.

"Hey, you," I said. "Rough day?"

"Yeah…it's looking up now, though."

He hooked an arm around my waist, pulling me against his body. I smiled and draped my arms over his shoulders.

"You took longer than I expected to come home," I whispered. "If I have to wear these stockings for another five minutes, I'm going to go crazy."

"You're always crazy," he said, his hand already sliding from my waist down to my hips as he guided me over to the couch. "But let's see if I can't make it up to you anyway…"

He sat down, pulling me onto his lap with my back against his chest; one of his hands was at my waist again, fumbling with my belt buckle, while the other moved deftly inside my jacket. He didn't bother to unpin the shoulder strap of the belt from beneath my epaulettes, preferring instead to just yank the whole assembly off at once before getting to work on my tie.

I sat there, completely detached from the situation, which struck me as odd; considering what had happened to me that day, I thought I would have appreciated the distraction more.

"Love you…" he mumbled, his lips against the back of my neck.

Usually I would respond with some term of reciprocal endearment.

I remained silent.

Sugi didn't seem to notice; he was already busy with the top buttons of my blouse.

Something needed to change.

* * *

My sleep patterns had always been unpredictable, due to a combination of the effects of my cybernetic augmentation and my military training, and despite my early start that morning, I was awake well past midnight. I lay on my side, staring into space.

Everything was wrong.

It was as if the fragile, cracked shell of a life that I'd tried for years to carefully construct for myself had finally shattered, leaving me kneeling in the wreckage with no choice but to pick up the pieces and try again.

The silver watch lay on my nightstand, faintly reflecting the light that crept in through the filmy curtains; even though I still wore it every day, I rarely thought of the little girl who had given it to me ten years ago.

Was this what she'd wanted for me?

I'd thought I was gaining my freedom by agreeing to work for the Ministry of Defense, but all I'd done was trap myself within its layers upon layers of bureaucracy.

Maybe this new job would be my way out.

I rolled onto my back and opened up a cybercomm channel.

_Ishikawa? Are you still up?_

_Of course. What happened? Are you all right?_

_I'm fine._

_Are you sure? Because if something happened and you need a place to stay…_

…_I could probably afford to go out and buy a fully furnished condo or something. I wanted to ask you a question._

_Shoot._

_If I took that Public Security job –and I haven't yet, this is just hypothetical—would you come work with me?_

_I've already told you yes._

_Okay; do you know anyone else who might have something to offer as well?_

_Maybe. I'll run through my contacts and check. What are you looking for?_

_I need either military experience or info gathering and manipulation experience, although a mixture of both would be preferable._

_Hmm. I might actually know a guy you'd be interested in…_

_Oh?_

_Yeah. I met him in Southeast Asia during the war – you know, during those three or so months we were split up? He was my unit's explosives expert, although he was a fair barrier breaker as well. Might be handy to have. We haven't spoken in a while, but I'm sure he'll remember me; we were pretty good buddies back in the day._

_Great; call and ask him when you get the chance, okay?_

_And this is all still hypothetical?_

_Very._

_Gotcha. I'll talk to him tomorrow._

_Thanks. If you think of anybody else, let me know._

_Sure. Hey, have you thought of giving Batou a call about this? You two still keep in touch, right?_

_Barely. And he's still with Section 4; I don't know if he'll jump ship entirely to join up with an unknown quantity._

_Honestly, if you were the one to ask? I'm pretty sure he'd leave Section 4 to help you open up a maid café, let alone a top-secret paramilitary unit. Anything for his major, y'know._

_I'm a commander who inspires deep-seated loyalty in her men. Sue me._

_I don't think 'loyalty' is the right word for it in this particular case, but anyway; you should at least call him and see if he's interested. I take it you've got Saito on board already…_

_Hypothetically, yes._

_Right, right, hypothetically. _

_Now, we've got our military skill sets fairly well covered, but I'm thinking we should try to pick up an ex-police detective or something; somebody with different training and a different method of going about things. I think I'll comb the NPA's personnel records and see if anybody stands out. Somebody who knows their way around the criminal underworld might be a good idea too – see if you can track down an informant who wants a regular gig._

_All right, Major, this is beginning to sound distinctly __**un**__-hypothetical; from the amount of effort you're expending here, I'm going to assume that tomorrow morning you're planning on calling up Mr. Aramaki and offering him a 50-year-contract on your soul._

_Not exactly._

* * *

I was between projects at the Ministry, so it was no trouble to take the next day and work from home. Well, 'work' wasn't exactly the right word; I'd merely asked if I really needed to come in that day, to which I received the curt reply that they'd let me know if anything came up.

My superiors were probably going to be just as glad to get rid of me as I was going to be when I left.

There was just one thing to take care of first.

I unfolded the cell phone I barely ever used and dialed the number on the card I'd been given, then waited.

After two rings, I heard the click of the receiver being picked up, and then a response.

"Aramaki speaking."

I breathed deeply.

"This is Motoko Kusanagi; we met yesterday."

"Indeed. Well, have you come up with an answer regarding my proposal?"

Time seemed to freeze. I heard my own words as if my body was speaking them independently.

"I accept, on one condition."

There was a short pause.

"Yes?"

"My body," I said. "It belongs to the Ministry of Defense, and as long as I'm inside it, I can't leave. Transferring to another one isn't exactly simple; most of my hardware is intended for military use, and it would be impossible for me to acquire a similar body independently. It would have to be ordered for me by someone with the proper authority."

"…I see."

"That's my price. Give me a new body, one that's actually _mine_, and…I'll work for you. Whatever you need from me, for however long you can keep your organization going, I'll do it."

Another pause, longer this time. I waited with baited breath; I didn't often experience nervousness, but as my entire future hinged on his answer, I felt I was entitled in this case.

"That can be arranged."

The tension flooded from my mind all at once.

"You'll have to wait a few weeks, however; these things take some time to process."

It was worth any amount of waiting.

"I understand. Thank you."

"You can thank me by providing a decent return on my investment," said Aramaki impatiently. "I'll have your new body shipped to Fukuoka; once you've transferred, your first assignment is to get yourself to Niihama. Then we can start getting everything in order."

"Yes, sir."

"I look forward to working with you, and I'll contact you again once your condition has been met. Until then, goodbye."

"Goodbye, sir."

* * *

A watery sun was just creeping over the skyline as I loaded my bags into my car.

_My_ car, not the boring one I'd been driving for the last few years – _that_ I'd sold as quickly as I could.

There really hadn't been much to pack up. It was mostly clothes and shoes, along with a few odd pieces of jewelry that I hung on to in the event that I found occasion to wear them.

The breakup had gone about as smoothly as I could have hoped; I hadn't contributed much to the apartment other than rent, so there was nothing to argue ownership over, and Sugi had honestly seemed less disappointed that I was leaving him and more disappointed that I'd owned a Ferrari all this time and never told him about it.

My new apartment in Niihama was ready and waiting for me; I'd gone out to sign the lease a week ago, and the furniture had been delivered the night before. The rest of my team, or at least the team I'd assembled so far, had already relocated and were waiting for me to arrive.

The last thing to fall into place had been my body.

I had half expected some kind of rush of emotion upon waking up, for the first time in my life, in my very own body, instead of one that I was merely allowed to inhabit, and when I opened my eyes only to find that it really wasn't that much different, I'd felt a little disappointed.

It was only later that evening, when I'd been taking the thing out for a brief test run and had finally done what I'd been aching to do ever since I'd been a child, that I had truly felt my freedom for the first time.

I had worked my way up from the sidewalk to the top of the highest building I could climb from the outside, and then stepped neatly over the edge and let myself fall.

The world around me had melted away into a rush of blurred colors and roaring wind as gravity had drawn me back to earth, pulling and pulling until I could fall no faster. As the roof below had rushed up to meet me, I'd curled myself into a ball, rolling with the impact.

Once I'd recovered, I had sprinted across the concrete, then launched myself into the air, across the gap between two buildings. Absorbing the energy of the landing in my legs, I had kept running, building up momentum for another leap. When I'd made it back home, my hair had been a tangled mess from the wind, and my new parts were trembling from being subjected to so much after not having been properly broken in yet, but it had been worth it.

After spending the last 20 years crawling, I had finally learned to fly.

I pulled back the sleeve of my jacket to check my watch; it was nearly 7:30. Time to be on my way.

I'd kept everyone waiting long enough.

* * *

(A/N: I'd say "the end", but this is really more of a beginning, and saying "the beginning" would just be stupid and cliche, so...I got nuthin'. Well, except THANK YOU to all of my wonderful, thoughtful readers and reviewers for sticking with this ramble for so long! Seriously, this thing is like 60 pages - it falls just shy of replacing UNINTENTION as the longest thing I've ever written. Now if I could manage to get the same amount of work done on my original novels...

Anyway, I hope this kindasorta clears up that inter-continuity plot weirdness where the Major's prosthetics are government property and that's why she works for Section 9, only nobody seems to be too fussed when she up and leaves after 2nd GIG happens. It would also explain her loyalty to Aramaki, again, kind of. I do the best I can.

I officially love writing Ishikawa now. He is the scruffy, cantankerous bachelor uncle I never even knew I wanted.

I'mma take a short break from writing to give my fingerprints some time to grow back after having been mercilessly sanded off on my keyboard, but after that I'm going to finish up that Major/Kayabuki story that I pitifully left hanging on the verge of mature content, and then after that...I dunno. I'll think about it for a while.

Thank you again to everyone who's read and enjoyed my work. Lesbian brainsex to each and every one of you ^_^)


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